


Fight The Dead Fear The Living (Daryl Dixon X Reader | Nick Clark X Reader)

by MiyakoNanashi



Category: Fear the Walking Dead (TV), The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Inspired by The Walking Dead, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:20:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 57,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25821292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiyakoNanashi/pseuds/MiyakoNanashi
Summary: "Nothing ever happened between us because you've never done anything for it. You always stayed alone.""I understand. But nobody gives me anything here.", Daryl said, still looking at Y/N.Who knows how many outstretched hands he had ignored in his life, who knows how many passed him without him even noticing. Daryl knew how many times he had reached out to someone to build a relationship. But it was time to reach for a hand if he wanted life to be worth living.[STORY - 2017] - Wattpad (possible grammatical errors)
Relationships: Daryl Dixon & You, Daryl Dixon/Other(s), Daryl Dixon/You, Nick Clark/Other(s), nick clark - Relationship
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

The landscape had changed, everyone had recognized it. They hadn’t used a card for a long time. It didn’t matter where they went or where they would end. Carl thought they were moving closer and closer to Mexico. He had never really cared about Mexico, but he still had a weak, cruel hope. Maybe they would live in peace in Mexico. Maybe they would arrive at the border, find a cure, and become Mexican citizens. They would ate tacos and Chili every day and Judith would learn to dance salsa. He’d mentioned his fantasy to the group and pretended he didn’t care, like it was a joke. His most hidden hopes had been dashed in haste and no possibility of return when Daryl snorted and said: “Believe me, they’ll be more dead than we are in this damn third world!” Not that Carl didn’t think about it. If the epidemic had brought one of the world powers to its knees in a few weeks, it would have been easier for the other countries to destroy it. But hope was still the last to die. They had spent the last two weeks hiding in a kindergarten full of drawings of children clinging to walls surrounded by toys. It had been a party for Judith, a little dream for Maggie. Unfortunately, the place was not as safe as they had imagined. The Walkers came at intervals of a few days, but when they hid it was hell. Rick had decided that it would be better to look for a safer place. Daryl was the first to recognize the change. They had left the forests of Georgia for a long time, they were in a place with different vegetation, a milder climate, more wild fauna and flora. It was a landscape Daryl didn’t like. He had gotten used to Georgia, its tall, dry trees, the thorn bushes. These lush, colorful plants with thick and green leaves were not exactly his favorites. And the humidity of this place, which clung to the skin and formed like a warm sweat, was unbearable. But now they were there, so they moved on through the bush, on the back roads and away from the cities.

“Stop.” Rick waved his hand and the others, not far from him, stopped without saying a word. Michonne looked around and narrowed her eyes and pricked her ears. Carl immediately loaded the weapon and pointed it forward. Daryl had struck an arrow in the crossbow. Both ready to shoot.

“Stay quiet.” Everyone was quiet for a while, listening only to the sounds of nature. A sudden crunch made each individual’s eyes look up. There were no special movements in the dense bush, but that was not the sound of an animal or a simple falling fruit. Branches cracked and broke under the weight of something. Daryl jumped forward, aimed his crossbow, but didn’t shoot. A figure began to move between the branches. The walk was insecure, awkward, slow, it had the desperation of those who can not move, but knowing that it has to do it. It was you.

“Hey!”, Daryl shouted, stepping forward until he was in close proximity to your figure. It took him only a short time to reach you and the moment he looked up, your figure lost his balance and fell on him. The first instinct was to go away, but after a flashy argument, he reached out an arm. He couldn’t do much. The unknown figure fell to the ground, but at least Daryl slowed the speed with which your head reached the ground. The others rushed to him, surrounding the bundle of misery within seconds, with loaded and ready-to-fire weapons. It soon became clear that so much caution was not necessary. The figure was a woman, you breathed and were no Walker. The members of the group looked at each other.

“What are we going to do with her?”, Carl asked. “Let’s go.”, Rick replied immediately. “What? Then you could kill her as well.” Michonne looked at him with angry eyes.

“We don’t know who she is, we don’t know if she’s dangerous or hurt, or if she has a group.” Daryl leaned over the woman and realized that you were nothing but extremely exhausted. You had a few weapons on your belt and a backpack on your back. Your Y/H/C hair was dirty and stuck to your face. “She’s dehydrated.”, Daryl said, looking up at the rest of the group. “That’s why she fell, she must have fainted.” He put a hand on your forehead. “Light fever.”

“Was she bitten?”, Carl asked. Daryl better fixed the stranger on the ground and examined your clothes, first with a cursory look, then smoothed his hands lightly over your torso and legs. “She doesn’t bleed, there are no bandages under the clothes, she is just sick.” Rick looked at the woman lying on the ground, his hands on his hips and his tongue between his teeth. He looked sideways at Michonne. “We don’t know who she is.”

“You didn’t even know who we were.”, she replied sarcastically, still angry. “Why don’t we tie her up?”,Carl suggested. “If the problem is that she attacks us or robs us when we wake up, then we make arrangements.” It seemed like a good idea. Daryl took the crossbow from his shoulders as a low noise made him turn around. You coughed, lay on the floor, barely opening your eyes, and your gaze was on Rick, who was watching you as well. Your eyelids flickered with the effort to keep them open.

“Travis?”, you murmured hoarsely. Then you fainted again. It was dawn when the stranger woke up completely. Two days had passed. The fever had subsided, you had stopped talking in the subconscious and occasionally called a Madison, an Alicia, a Nick and a Chris. You had finally fallen asleep and that for a very long time. The sun hit your face when you finally woke up again, you coughed, cleared your throat and tried again. “Madison?”

“Madison is not there, none of the names you mentioned.” Rick, guarding the camp, came over and handed you a small bottle of water. You took it and realized only then that you had tied wrists and feet. You emptied half the bottle in less than a few seconds, stopped to catch your breath, and gave the man a vicious look. “Who are you? Where are they?”

“You’re with my group, I can not say where, we don’t know it exactly.”

“Where are the others?”

“We found you alone, you were delirious, you had a fever, you fainted… We took you with us.” You only snorted. “Why?” Rick was quiet for a moment. “Someone didn’t think it was right to leave you behind.”

“What a magnanimous gesture, and why am I tied up?”

“You survived, you should know that you can not trust anyone, so you’re tied up.” Rick leaned over you and began to cut the ropes. You were weak and besides, Rick had stripped you of all the weapons you had with you, a pistol, a machete, a knife, and a bow. “My name is Rick, Rick Grimes.”You waited until you were free, rubbed your wrists, and then untied the ropes on your ankles alone. “Y/N.”

“Y/N?”

“Yes, that’s my name.”

“Good Y/N…”, Rick said as you finished. “You can go, none of us will stop you.”

“And my things?”

“We hid them, buried right under you.” You moved easily, keeping an eye on Rick. The earth was fresh and you could see that it had been moved. You took one last look at the man and began digging until you reached your backpack. Despite the morning chill, large drops of cold sweat began to wet your forehead and fell over your temples. As you did so, others woke up and prepared to leave. Neither of them talked to you and they didn’t look at you. Suddenly two hands appeared next to you to help you dig. A boy with long dark hair smiled at you. He had a blindfold, like a pirate from old adventure movies. “I’ll help you, my name is Carl.”

“Y/N…” In a few minutes you reached the backpack, buried in the ground and stuck in the shallow roots. You shook him and wiped the faded fabric as best as you could, then put the backpack over your shoulder. For the first time, you watched the other members of the group. Next to Rick and Carl was a woman with a katana on her back and a man with long hair, unshaven and wearing a biker jacket with angel wings. “I think I have to thank you.”, you said to Rick. “Thank Carl and Michonne.”, Rick said pointing to them. You nodded in their direction. “I…” A shiver passed over you and you leaned against a tree. “Are you okay?”, Carl asked. “Yeah, I’m fine, I probably just have to eat something.”

“Then stay a little bit longer, eat something with us.” You looked at the supplies of the group. You had not eaten for several days. Rick grabbed a can of fruits and handed it to you. Before you could grab the can, Rick held you back. “Do you have a group?”, he asked seriously. “Yes, but I don’t know where I am.”

“What happened?”

“We were attacked, they set fire to our camp, we parted ways.”

“Who attacked you?” You shrugged your head in retrospect: “Plunderers.” Rick nodded and gave you the fruits. “How many are in your group?” You, with your hands already immersed in the fruits, looked up. “Seven. Including me.”, you replied with your full mouth. “Where did you go?”

“We don’t go anywhere, we just want to survive, together, as a family…” You suddenly fell silent, shaken by a sob. You left the fruits on the ground and jumped up. With two long strides you reached the next tree and vomited everything you had just eaten. “Daryl, what the hell…”, Michonne said suddenly. “What?” The man put a hand into the can of fruits and took one. “You can not eat them, I think…” You reappeared, paler and sweatier than before. “Sorry… I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“How long have you not eaten?”, Michonne asked, giving Daryl one last look. “I don’t know.”

“You have to start over and over again, you are not fully up to date.” Carl let you look at his father and vice versa. At last he approached you. “Listen, why don’t you stay with us?” You shook your head. “I have to search for my group.”

“Only until you feel better.” The boy looked at his father for support. “Alright, just get better, it will not take more than two weeks, how long have you been traveling around here?”, Rick asked. “Very long, at least a few months already.”

“We’re looking for a safe place to rest and leave Atlanta to find something better.”

“Where are your people now?”, Rick added. “Not far from here, I think, or I hope…” You shook your head again. “It will not be safe there. Too many Walkers. We’ve already tried it.” Rick stepped forward. “Do you know this area? Do you know where we could go?” You looked uncertain: “I already told you, and you know it, there are no safe places, maybe you could try heading north, maybe you’ll find something that suits you, but don’t hope too much.” The man remained thoughtful for a moment, looking around as if the surroundings suggested the answer. “Carl is right, you’re sick, if you come with us, we could help each other, we could give you food and shelter, we also have medicines.”

“What should I do for it?”

“In return, you show us where we can go.”

“You said you wouldn’t stop me if I wanted to leave.”

“As a matter of fact. You are not a prisoner, you can go whenever you want. But… see it more as an opportunity. You have nothing to lose.”, Rick said and walked away, settling near Daryl, picking up a fruit and starting to eat it. Later, you all reached the nearest village and followed a street you pointed to. It was almost dark, but the figures of the Walkers were still distinguishable from plunderers. “There are still Walkers, but they are becoming less and less, following a herd from time to time, leaving the group and finding themselves on the main street after passing several miles of arable land.”, you sighed and looked at the empty streets. For a few hours, a sting in your stomach disturbed you to such an extent that you jumped when you made strange or sudden movements. “Let’s find a place for the night.”, Rick said, starting with the first house he could find. The group of Survivors settled in the large living room of a villa. There were not enough sofas for everyone, but some armchairs were very comfortable. The next day they donned a supply of clothes, blankets, you yourself took a new backpack, bigger and more spacious and a sleeping bag. Carl also found a lot of unhealthy food. “This guy had to have a high cholesterol level.”, you laughed and put chips, burritos and various sweets in a bag. Carl grinned. “Better for us.”

“In fact, the sugar does not stay in the body for long, and most of it is addictive, leading to long depression and impotence.” An arm appeared in front of you, reaching for a pack of nachos. “If you don’t like them, don’t eat them.”, Daryl said, opened the package and walked to the garage door. “What did you do before all this?”, Carl asked. You, distracted by the man’s harsh behavior, turned away from Daryl. “I studied, I went to university.”

“What did you study?”

“Veterinary medicine. Not really useful these days, if you really want to know, I should have left it to become a doctor.”

Daryl and you explored the house and decided to go out to Michonne’s suggestion to inspect the city. It was noon, the sun was high and started to burn. You walked along the street that looked like the main street when you saw some Walkers. “Shouldn’t there be a herd every now and then?”, Daryl asked and looked at you grimly. You smiled half apologetically. “That’s only luck.” And a short time later, a small herd was trudging along the road. Some of the Walkers had seen you both and already started growling and coming in your direction…

“I think it’s better if we go now.”


	2. Chapter 2

Everything in the office was clean and perfect, from the paperweight to the pen holder, from the PC screen perfectly parallel to the keyboard, to the design vase. There was no trace of restlessness, as if the Apocalypse had never occurred there. The posters on the walls showed smiling people, frozen in a past that no longer existed. They applied the police, loans, young people’s giro accounts, the family, the home, the work… You jumped as a screeching noise filled the air. “What are you doing there?” Daryl moved chairs into a corner. “I’ll make room if we need to sleep, I’d like to lie down.” You gave one last look to the poster and then went to him. “You can plan something like that, you know?”, you replied sarcastically. He didn’t answer. “None of us thought of escaping to a bank when it all happened, and then saying it should be a safe place.” There was no sign of Daryl hearing what you said. “You don’t talk that much, do you?” The man sat down in a cubicle and took his place between the desk and the low plasterboard wall, occupying all the space available. You pursed your lips and cursed the moment when the Walkers caught you and Daryl between those two buildings. You had succeeded in joining the bank, but you would rather have had a more talkative person by your side. When the group escaped, you both were left behind, mainly because of you, who were already panting after a few minutes of running. Daryl had stopped to wait for you, killing a few Walkers with his crossbow and making no mistake. He had heaved you onto his shoulders and had broken the glass in the bench window. In this way, you had escaped and tried to find a way out before you realized that the whole building was surrounded. You had decided to wait until the next morning, hoping the Walkers had thinned out in the meantime. You arranged the backpack under your head like a pillow, with bad, rather uncomfortable results. “Anyway, I always thought I’d break into a bank sooner or later.” Daryl’s deep voice filled the silence. “But I didn’t imagine it would be that way.” You took a moment to understand those words, then chuckled. Maybe more because of the surprise of hearing him speak than for the sentence itself. “What did you do before?”, you asked. Daryl shrugged in the dark. “Nothing. I was probably just waiting to get into trouble.”

“So it was not a big change for you.” From the cabin in front of Daryl, which was separated only by the narrow corridor, you looked at each other for a moment. “I was kidding.” Daryl looked back at the ceiling. A wry smile was painted on his face, but he tried to suppress it. “What are we going to do tomorrow?”, you asked. “We’ll see, if there are only a few Walkers left, it may be enough to kill some and go.”

“And if there are too many?” He was quiet for a while, long enough for you to wait for an answer. “We’ll see.”, he finally said. “What do you miss in the old world?” Without receiving an answer, you continued, “For me, the music. In the beginning, music players still worked, if you could find some.”

“Sensible food.” Daryl turned to you, swinging a foot and holding his arms behind his head. “For real?” He nodded. “Oh hell, you made me hungry, thank you.”

“And that reminds me of something… Alicia, for example-…” You fell silent. Daryl could almost hear your thoughts contract. Whoever Alicia and the others were, they were not with you and that was enough. “Let’s sleep.”, said the man, turning his back to you and adjusting his jacket under his head. “Yes.”

“Get up! Get awake! Run!”, Rick’s voice came from a not too distant distance. Daryl jumped up, saw the van and leaned forward to reach you, with too many Walkers behind. He grabbed your hand and dragged you to him. Slowly you dragged yourselves onto the seats, while Daryl tried to brush his long hair off his face. “What a fucking great sense of survival!”

“Keep your damn mouth shut!” You inhaled slowly, staring with an annoyed grimace at the delivery van’s ceiling. “A little sports in the morning hasn’t hurt anyone yet, but you didn’t have to protect me.”From the driver’s seat, Rick glanced at you from the rearview mirror. “And you have to show us safe places, not places full of Walkers.”

“Touché.”

Carl’s face appeared in front of your gaze as you drove. “Are you hungry?” Carl explained to you that they were looking for a place where they could spend a quiet time without having to worry about biter and plunderers. His sister Judith started walking and it became increasingly difficult to keep an eye on her. “So, let me understand, there are little kids in your group?”

“Yes, my sister Judith.” Michonne chuckled. “Yes, in such a time it should be a lawful reaction.” You raised your eyebrows. “You’ll admit it’s not common, I think I haven’t seen a baby in years.”

You all were now still standing there trying to prepare an improvised dinner. Rick had chosen the van as your temporary base. “That’s how we can move more easily.”, he had said. You had moved away from the others and walked slowly through the bush of Mexico. Your ears strained to detect suspicious sounds and traces on the ground. “What are you searching for?” You didn’t even look up. You had heard someone coming and from the direction of the sound and the way it moved, free and not creeping, you had already thought that it was someone outside the group. “Dry wood, maybe.”

“To do what?” You looked up at Daryl and smiled crookedly. The man was fascinated for a moment by how you couldn’t laugh at anything special. However, there were not many who smiled. It was almost a relief to look at you and make him believe there was still someone smiling in the world. “I want to light a fire, build a barbecue and maybe even some salt or a few other spices to give our food a little taste.”

“Right now, everything that is meat is fine with me, with or without salt.”, Daryl said and began to look around to help you. You formed a small tower of wood, found some broken glass, enough to create a small fire that would burn for a few hours. A voice reached you shortly afterwards. Carl appeared in the bush. “What are you doing?”

“Fire for a few foods.” You walked away, determined to look elsewhere. “You don’t believe that we’re in the middle of midsummer and can grill, right?”, Carl said sarcastically to cheer up and release the jammed mood. “How do you want to know that?”, you asked before disappearing among the thicket. Carl laughed. “You’re right.”

“Because of the heat, it might be true.”, Daryl said, as he passed the sweat on his sticky forehead with a forearm. A knock in the thicket distracted him from his thoughts. “Y/N!”, Daryl said in a curious tone as if he was scolding. As if he were a child punished by his parents. He passed the clump of trees where you had disappeared with Carl in tow. In the clearing, he didn’t find exactly what he expected. There was a man on the ground, a big wound on his temple that was bleeding heavily. Not far from him, a large stone stained with blood. Another man held you against a tree, his hand at your throat and a gun aimed at your face. When he saw Daryl, the stranger aimed the weapon at him and pulled you up to hold you in front of him, his arm tight around your neck.

“What do you want?”

At the same moment, Daryl had pulled his crossbow and aimed it at the man’s head. But the man was too close to your side to shoot him without hurting you. “Let them go, everyone goes his way and nobody will die.”

“Let this girl go?” The man took your chin and forced you to turn to him, then a grin escaped his lips. “Why? Such a beautiful woman… Why should I let her go?”, the stranger snapped in Daryl’s direction and aimed his weapon at your temple. “Let’s make a deal instead, I’ll take her, and you and the kid go where you want, doesn’t that sound like a good fix?” Daryl was about to shoot when a rustle of leaves made him turn around. A third man jumped out of the bush. Before he could do anything, the stranger threw you to the ground, stood behind Daryl and hit him on the back of his head with his pistol several times. The last thing he heard was Carl’s screams, then he lost consciousness… Daryl was awakened by the pain in his head, a rhythmic, throbbing blow at the base of his neck that branched up. When he opened his eyes, his vision was blurry and it took him a moment to remember what had happened. He was in a dark room with a high ceiling, the only window was at least two meters high, if not more. From the light that came in he could see that it was already dark. He was not tied, and that was a good sign, but the door in front of him had to be armored.

“Daryl?”

The man suddenly turned around and this caused even more pain in his head. “I thought they accidentally killed you, you slept all day…” You were not far from him. Your face remained in the shadows, but that voice was undoubtedly yours.“Where are we, where is Carl and the others?”

“It’s just us both, Carl escaped, I think he managed to reach the others… I hope so.”, you sighed. “We are in a cold store of a slaughterhouse.” Daryl looked around. “Did you see how many there are?”

“Not more than five, I think.”

“Did they take our things? The weapons?”

“Yes…”

“Alright…” The man got up and started to examine the room. His mind was already searching for an escape plan. There was nothing you could use as a weapon, but there were thick iron bars with hooks hanging over you on the ceiling. Surely that was the place where the cadavers were crammed, the hooks made of iron, thick and pointed. They were too high to handle alone. Daryl turned to you. “We have to take a few of them as soon as they open the door, let’s hurry up and leave, I’ll lift you up, you should be able to reach them.”, he said. But you didn’t answer, then you went to him with clumsy, slow movements and looked up at the ceiling. Just as your face was struck by the faint light coming in through the window, Daryl understood why you did not want to be seen. You had clear tears on your face, a torn bodice, injuries to your collarbones, a bruise on your cheekbones and a bloody lower lip, as well as a split, bloody eyebrow. Daryl’s mouth went dry and he barely lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry…”, he mumbled and approached you hesitantly and checked the wounds. He looked desperate, uncomfortable, and could not speak without his hands shaking with rage. “Did they-…?”

“No, I kicked them so hard in the crotch that they bent in pain.” For a second, your lips twisted into a faint smile that soon turned into a grimace. You were shaken by sobs, but you did not cry. Daryl looked at you for a moment before reaching the point where there was no turning back. He gently grabbed you by the shoulders and hugged you, maybe a little jammed, but you did not notice. Your breathing was still erratic, Daryl could feel it on his shoulder where he had placed your face. He began to place his hand on your back, slow circular movements, long and rhythmic. The trembling of your body diminished and your gasp became less and less. “Is it better?”, he asked hoarsely ‘cause he didn’t know how to behave. Consoling, calming and laughing was never his strong point and it was even worse right now. You swallowed and moved away from him. “Yes, thank you.” Worried that you might get upset again, Daryl looked into your face and when he realized that you were not looking at him, he forced you to look up and lifted your chin.

“I need you to stay focused so we can make it out of here together, can you give it a try?”

You nodded. Daryl loosened his grip and pointed at the hooks hanging from the ceiling. “We will use them as weapons.” He bent down, grabbed you carefully, and began to pick you up. At first it did not seem to bother you, but when you felt Daryl’s hands at your sides, you began to fight back. “Wait, please wait… Stop…” He took a few steps away.

“What’s the problem?”

You hesitated for a moment, avoiding the man’s eyes. “I’m sorry, I’m still confused and trembling, now I’m calming down…” Daryl ran a hand over his face and you didn’t understand if it was a casual gesture or just despair. “Alright.”, he said suddenly, approaching you. “Look, we haven’t known each other so long, but… it’s me, you know, I’m not going to hurt you.” Your eyes moved from his face to his hands, which the man held to you, but you still looked terrified. “Alright… My name is Daryl Dixon, I’m from Atlanta, I’m not good at these things, if my brother Merle had been there, he would have known what to do, more or less.” At each word, the man had moved closer to you and slowly, keeping you still in mind, gently lifted, and as high as he could. You extended your arm as far as possible and grabbed two hooks. “I got them.” Daryl let you slide into his arms until your feet touched the ground and you both stood face to face. He wanted to leave immediately. “Wait.”,you said, holding him back, closer than normal, between two acquaintances. You hugged him gently, resting your head on his shoulder and closing your eyes. You tried to remember that not all humans were evil and damned like the men you had just met. Daryl was not one of them. You were safe with Daryl. “Thank you for your patience.”, you finally said, handing him an iron hook and going into a corner. Daryl remained in the middle of the room, his hook in his hands and walked away and onto the opposite side. He didn’t want to disturb you, he didn’t even want to be near you. For a moment, just for a second, he had felt different than usual. You hadn’t been indifferent to this embrace. If he thought of something like that at the time, it felt like a funny thing. But you had trusted him, sought his help, and at that moment he couldn’t help but notice that your breasts were pressed against his chest, the soft shape of your hips under his hands, your arms around his back. Daryl snorted and twisted the iron hook in his hands, studying it as if he could hide a secret. He glanced sideways at you, who had your eyes fixed on something, staring at something that only you saw. Your Y/H/C hair fell on your shoulders. Has you always been so beautiful? Was that what Daryl tried to understand? You were no more and no less beautiful than other girls, and yet he loved it. Maybe it was just a bizarre question of chemistry. Daryl hated that he hadn’t been more careful over the years. He had spent a lifetime ignoring all those who tried to approach him and now he couldn’t even understand what he felt and what he was thinking. He gave you one last look and grabbed the hook in his hands. Daryl didn’t know if this moment was so beautiful because of you, or just so pretty to die together…


	3. Chapter 3

You leaned in front of the tied man and played with the hook you held in your hands. You paused and turned the hook back to your palm. “You and your group are bastards, plunderers, men who murder, rob, and rape survivors, and you deserve it much worse than what we did to you.”

The man spat, but most of the saliva landed on his chin, the rest stopped a short distance from you, but didn’t reach you. “Damn bitch, we should have killed you as we could!”

“Tell us where the others are and you will die instantly and without pain.”, you replied unimpressed. “If you think I believe your nonsense…” You turned around and ignored the rest of the sentence. “What are we going to do with him, Daryl?” The man standing in the corner of the room with his hands resting on his crossbow, listened quietly. At that moment, he understood how you had survived all those years in such a world. You seemed so nice and innocent, but if someone made you angry, it was better not to get in you way or you would regret it and pay with your life. Besides, one should hope to be quick enough, because if you found that person, you would have no mercy and no peace. “I’m not for killing him, I’m just for cutting off his balls.” You turned back to the prisoner. “He’d just cut them off, y'know… Personally, I’d like to let you die slowly, in a bed, tied up, if you lie there and I leave you there for a few hours, you will not feel your legs anymore. After a day, you want to tear your spine out and you want to tear your aching, cramped back to pieces.The restraints will give you injuries to your knees, hips and elbows and I’ll bind your hands behind your back, until your shoulders dislocate. After a week, if you’re not already dead, which you’re likely to be because you’re dehydrated, the Walkers would fetch you, and because you can not move, you’ll have to watch them how they eat you alive.” You were deadly serious when you looked him in the eye and the dry manner in which you recited these sentences shook both men in the room. “Don’t think I’m lying, I hate you with all my heart.”, you said with an ironic smile. The man seemed to read in your eyes that you were really serious. He wasn’t stupid, he knew he was going to die. They had you, the man and the boy surrounded like wild animals… Now you retaliated and he knew that he deserved every second of his torture. It was worth it to die as painlessly as possible. He swallowed and felt a drop of sweat run down his temple. “I was in a motel, a few miles from here, along the highway…”

“Why did you imprison us both, what did you want to do with Daryl?”

“We don’t kill anyone. We all bring them to our leader, then he decides what to do with them… or what they are useful for…” You raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?” The man nodded and looked away for a second, something like shame darkened his face. “In the case of men, whether to kill them or keep them in the group, as a resource, for supplies. We keep the women. Everyone…”Daryl stepped forward, his eyes angry and his jaw contracting. “How did you defend this place?” You spent the next few minutes interrogating your prisoner and receiving various useful information. Daryl dismissed him and said to you: “The honor is yours.” You leaned on the hook to get off the floor, and then held it, you didn’t hesitate for a moment. “Bye-Bye, Asshole.”, you said, ramming the hook through one of the man’s eyes.

The plan wasn’t exactly what it was meant to be, not that Daryl Dixon was sorry to help these women in a motel run by a group of madmen from the outside world. But he did not imagine he’d be in the middle of a minor social revolt when he and you arrived at the motel in the early morning, they had the men standing on shabby, rusty cars and a couple of motorbikes… The only one left was a big-bellied man with a long beard and a faded cap lowered over his forehead. You hid behind a large billboard with Daryl watching the motel and turned to face him. “Okay, let’s kill those assholes and then let’s talk to the trapped women, we’ll tell them we want to help them escape and in return we ask for some supplies, it seems fair, don’t you think?”

“It seems to me that we risk more than we deserve.”

“Daryl, we can’t leave them there.”

“And I didn’t say that.”, the man had snorted and put an arrow in the crossbow. He had no time to trigger the mechanism when the sound of a shot filled the air. “What the hell…?” His eyes immediately fell on the man with the hat. He was lying on the ground and a bloodstain spread on his chest. A second shot, which suddenly sounded, hit him in the head. Daryl wanted to tell you to leave, as soon as possible, when the cold barrel of a pistol on his neck made him jump. He froze, dropping his crossbow to the floor and slowly raising his hands. “Well, I see you’ve already figured out what’s expected of you.”, said a female voice behind him. Tied up, gagged, handed over to several angry women who looked at him. Daryl consoled himself with the fact that you were no better off than he was, just because you had a pair of breasts. You didn’t fare better.

There was a lot of work around them. The women here at the motel could walk from the gas station to the bar and the front desk, without having to risk stepping into the parking lot. They had their weapons stowed in a closet after stealing a key from the man who was shot earlier and now in his condition didn’t have much to say. The windows had been barricaded with wooden boards so that only a small gap was left to aim with a weapon. When everything was ready, the leader turned to the two invaders. You and Daryl. “Looks like you came here at the wrong time.” She came in slow steps closer, the eyes of all her companions on you. She approached Daryl, pulled out a knife and approached his face dangerously close. The man didn’t go away but kept eye contact with the woman’s eyes. She seemed to change her mind. So she turned to you and cut through the cloth with which she had closed your mouth. “Did HE send you?”

“I don’t know who you mean.”, you replied monotonously. “Of course… That’s bullshit, he’s known for a long time that we’re done with him and those other bastards. He guessed something!”

“We came because we thought you needed help in exchange for food, we killed some of these men and one of them said where they came from, we didn’t want to hurt you.” The woman thought about those words as you looked around. “They will stay here until we’re done.”, the leader said and turned to two girls. “Put them in the closet.”One of them hesitated… “But… Boss, they will not be able to breathe there for long, we don’t know how long it will take, it could take hours and they would choke.”

“I don’t care, this is the only opportunity we have.”,the woman said louder and turned to all her companions. “If we don’t make it today, they’ll let us pay for it, you know how it works!” The women exchanged a worried look among themselves. Finally, they seemed to decide that it wasn’t worth the risk for two strangers. They approached you, grabbed you under the armpits and started pulling you away. “No, wait!” You turned to the leader. “We’ll help you get rid of them, you will not be able to do it alone.” The woman stopped and the others did the same. You turned again to the leader, a mixture of fear and anger on your face. “You probably don’t know all how to use weapons, your aiming and sighting is very bad, you may not be able to kill them, not even with all the bullets you have and if you could still kill them, the Walkers are attracted by the noise. There are several small herds in this area, they would defeat you all.” Some women started whispering to each other. The leader glanced at her companion first, then looked back at you. “What the hell makes you think we can not use weapons?”

“You had to shoot a stationary target twice to shoot it in the head, you can see right away that you’re not used to holding a pistol or rifle, and if those men don’t kill you, it’ll be the Walkers. Let’s help you, we’re good at shooting, I can shoot a Walker in the head from a distance of many yards, Daryl is an archer too, his crossbow doesn’t even make a sound, it wouldn’t attract too many Walkers.” You remained uncertain with your eyes wide open, waiting for the verdict. “Deal.”

“You’re a terrible speculator, that’s the best deal I’ve ever made.”, you smiled and put your weapons in a bag while Daryl filled a backpack with canned food. “It wasn’t that hard.”

“They all had no experience.” With a slight frown, you closed the bag and placed it in a corner of the double room you were given this night. The leader said you both could rest there, but you had to leave the next morning. “Where are you going?”,Daryl asked, looking up in your direction. “I’d like to get some water, and I’d like to do some washing, and the leader told me that there’s a small pond near here and you don’t know how long ago I’ve been able to wash myself.”, you smiled and opened the bathroom door. “Did you see, when do we get the chance to have a bathtub, you know how rare it is today.” Daryl has also dropped his bag on the ground. “Fine. Then it’s my turn, now only cigarettes are missing.”

“Ask the boss of these women. There’s a sort of warehouse here, sure they’ll have some left over.”Daryl followed the advice and walked over to the leader, who was about to go together with the others and he immediately got the last packet of cigarettes and went to smoke a cig, away from the noise, his crossbow at his side and under the clear sky that opened above him, it was a nice day, later he whirled around in the small shop and put provisions in his pocket. A knife for Carl and a doll for little Judith. Finally, he was shown the small pond and he went to fill two large buckets, thinking that you were done with washing in the meantime. He went the way to the room, the buckets lost a few drops of water on the floor behind him, and he had practically arrived when he suddenly stopped, the first instinct was to look away and Daryl turned, the buckets still in his hands as he took a few steps back. Through a crack of white curtains he could see you in front of the mirror, wearing only your underwear. He thought about making himself felt, not letting you know that he had seen you and that you could dress before he entered. But his eyes fell back into the room. You examined your body in the immediate vicinity of the mirror, touched your wounds, and then looked critically at your body again. You put your palms on the curves of your breasts, on the belly, on the sides and the upper part of your thighs. You then turned around and Daryl could see the many bruises and injuries. For a fleeting moment as you touched, Daryl imagined his hands touching you. He would have put his hand on your cheek and then slowly slid down your neck. He thought of the feeling of soft skin under his palms… Daryl suddenly had to cough slightly and walked the few remaining meters to reach the door with a heavy step. “Y/N, open the door!”

“Give me a second!”, a loud call in the room warned him. When he opened the door, you wore the same old ripped pants and a shirt you had found somewhere. Your hair was wet, hanging loose on your shoulders, and you did nothing to keep the water from falling to the ground and your clothes. Daryl couldn’t help but notice that you wore no bra, almost thrilled with the situation. Instead of the harmonic curve formed by the bra, he could see the tips of your nipples touching the fabric of your top. “I guess you’re clean enough.”, he said sullenly and avoided your eye contact. He closed the bathroom door behind him, slammed it harder than he wanted, and when he was there he set the buckets on the floor and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. He didn’t know what was wrong with him. It wasn’t the first time he had felt attracted to a woman, certainly not. But it was the first time since it all started. His brother Merle always made fun of him. He didn’t often find a girl he liked. Of course, Merle hadn’t been a gentleman, he’d walked around the bars just to say, ‘This is my little baby brother!’ What worried him about you was generally acceptable. It was the general context that angered him. He didn’t want to make any stronger connection with anyone than he needed. He was in his own group and for that he thanked them, because the group also consisted of individuals like Glenn whom he knew from the beginning. And yet he knew he was clinging to them like he had never done except with his brother Merle. He couldn’t stand a stronger bond with someone else. The risks were too high, 'cause death was the beginning and the end of every day. Life with the fear of losing one of the members of the group, of his now family, was unbearable. Daryl didn’t dare to imagine the fear of losing a person who he loved more than his current family. Maybe it was selfish of him… But he did it for himself so he wouldn’t have to suffer any more. But at least he had a bit of self-respect, so he should be grateful for that… Daryl threw one bucket of water into the tub after the other. He undressed, plunged in, and lit another cigarette. He sat thoughtfully for a long time, enjoying the sharp and stinging smoke on his palate until the water made his fingertips shrivel. He thought too much, that’s his problem.

You slept in your bed and was turned with your back to him. You had closed the door and the windows, and a pistol stood out from under your pillow. A knife lay not far away on the bedside table, and the faithful machete leaned against the wall beside the bed. Daryl looked down at your figure, your hips barely palpable under the covers, and your face under the Y/H/C hair as beautiful as the starless night. He couldn’t do it. Everything he had imagined in the past few days was a big nonsense… He just had to try to think further about what was right and what was not.


	4. Chapter 4

You and Daryl had been out for a few days before finding Rick and the others with the rest of the group. Once again they were looking for a safe place. “How long do we have to keep going?”, Carl asked suddenly. “Dad?”

“As long as necessary, the places we’ve seen so far are not suitable, too many Walkers.”

“And those damn bastards always find a way in.”,Daryl said. Michonne stared at Rick for a few moments. “We should turn back, we can’t control all the places from here to the West Coast.” The man stopped and bit his lower lip. His eyes seemed lost but focused and his mind worked feverishly. “We can’t go back, what about Judith, for example?”

“Dad, Judith needs to get to know the world out there, too.”, Carl said. “She was born in a prison, it was a safe place, it’s been months since we even went around as we left Alexandria.” It was quiet and Michonne resumed the speech, perhaps more to break the silence than to take stock of the situation. “We’re going too far, we don’t know if the others need us, they could be in trouble.”

“There’s Glenn and Carol, they can get along very well, you should know that.”, Rick answered. “We could choose another location to look for shelter.”,Daryl said. “We come from the east and we go west, we look north or south.”

“But first we go back to the base to see how the others are doing.”, Michonne clarified. Rick thought for a moment, but he had to admit to himself that the search was disappointing so far. They had found nothing. “Okay, I agree, but we’ll come back and we’ll try it again somewhere else.”The group turned and began, slightly disappointed, to march in the direction they had come from. You reached Carl and approached him at his pace. “Where is your base?”

“In an old kindergarten, it’s not far from where we met back then.”

“Then I think, I’ll annoy you a bit longer… After that, I’ll go. I promise.”, you smiled as Carl looked at you in surprise. Daryl barely turned his head in front of you two, but at the last moment he resisted the temptation to turn completely around and engage in the conversation. “Do you really want to go?”, Carl asked. “I have to find my group…”

“But… maybe we’ll find them on the way, if you stay with us you have more chances.” You shook your head. “Your father is very careful and has many other things to think about, things that are more important, he will not waste time looking for a group that isn’t his own and he will never want to endanger you and your sister by doing that. I mean taking risks just to meet strangers.”

“It’s not long ago that we know each other, that’s true, but you also helped us in this time, you helped Daryl, you helped Michonne, all of us.”

You sighed. “I don’t want to get Rick and all of your family in trouble, don’t worry about me, I’ll do it, I don’t rule out that we’ll meet again and I’ll find my group faster than I think, you will not be far away, I know where to look.” Carl didn’t seem convinced, but you wanted to end the conversation at this point, so you smiled and walked away to go on your own. If the ground had been paved, or if there had been a road, a path, if only a gutter, you all wouldn’t have taken so long. The bushes slowed you and scratched your clothes, the roots of the trees made you all stumble, in some places the vegetation was so dense that you had to get around a bit. The group around Rick Grimes was tired and they wanted to look around to make sure everything was alright and you agreed. Daryl spent most of his time hunting. He didn’t speak to anyone, and the only time you could hear his voice was when he complained ’about that damn asshole of a cactus’. It was clear that the man had a reason for his bad temper, and the evening after the conversation between Carl and you everything was even clearer. You had stopped and after several failed attempts because of the humidity of the wood, you lit a fire. Daryl had killed a big bird, or something that at least looked very similar.

“How is your group?”, Carl suddenly asked as the others waited for the dinner to be cooked. “Have you had many survivors in your group?” Rick tensed his ears slightly. He had become used to you, you were a good person and he didn’t think you would betray his group. But knowing more about your own group couldn’t hurt. They had to be clever people to survive here. “Well… we’ve been more people before…”, you said, as a fleeting answer to the question. “Have you been together from the beginning?”

“Not really, I met them after a while, but they’ve been together since it all started, a bit like you.”,you answered and pointed to Glenn, Daryl, Rick and Carl, as well as Carol. You looked desperate, but then you started talking: “There’s Travis and Chris, father and son… Then Madison, she’s the partner of Travis, and Alicia and Nick are her daughter and her son… Just a patchwork family…”You stared blankly at the pistol you held in your hand. “You said seven.” Rick said. You looked up and smiled sadly. “Yes, you’re right, there’s Victor Strand, the captain…”, you mumbled. “You’re one of them, too.”, Michonne said with a reassuring look. “From the way you talk about them, I see that there is affection among you all that you trust.”You smiled, thankful for those words. “You will find them again.” You took a deep breath and looked away again. “I hope so.”, you said, pushing your piece of meat to Carl’s hands. “Take it.” You walked away in slow, bored steps and kicked at the shrubs that protruded from the soft ground. Daryl, who followed every word carefully without intervening, waited until you were far enough away to address Michonne. “You shouldn’t lie to her y'know.”

“What do you mean Daryl?”

“They could be dead and walking around like those fucking living dead bastards! And you know it!”, he said seriously. Carl moved over to Michonne and Daryl. “What if they are still alive?”

“If they are, they would still be wandering around these woods until a herd or a group kills them.”,Rick added with a cough. “What are you suggesting?”, Daryl asked.

“We will not let her go, she’ll come with us, if she gets used to our group, our family, she will want to stay with us, it doesn’t make any difference who she is with.”, Rick replied slightly annoyed.

“What the damn hell? That’s bullshit! You wouldn’t say that if you were in that fucked up situation!”,Daryl snorted angrily.

“Daryl…” Michonne held back a smile, but in her voice one could hear the rare lightness of a woman joking with her friends. “But you have no other reason to want to keep Y/N here. Don’t you?”Daryl avoided her gaze, and for Michonne that was confirmation of her words. She chuckled and looked at Rick, who looked just as amused as she was. Daryl left the leftovers of the food on the ground and watched the two of them grinning. “Tell me when you’re finished with that shit.”

“Especially now that we’ve found out that you have a heart, too?”, Rick teased him. They burst out laughing, at first softly, then louder as Daryl got up in annoyance and walked away. He was careful to see you move in the opposite direction.

The happier you became, the more Daryl became sullen and silent. If Carl asked him from time to time, he would push him to you. This morning, on the way to the base, you seemed to be in a better mood than usual. “Not far from here there should be a distributor along the way, and tomorrow I’ll reach him on foot to get a map.”, you announced, as you all prepared to march on.

“So you will leave us?”

“Yes, Carl, I have to find the others, I bet they’re looking for me, too.” The boy nodded. They set off, and despite your cheerfulness, Carl’s and Daryl’s morals were on the other side of good humor. It wasn’t even noon when you noticed that Daryl had moved away from the group a bit. While the others were ahead, he stayed far behind, peering into the sky and giving the others a nefarious look, as if all this was their fault. You stopped and waited a few moments for the man to reach you. He had watched you in the distance to stop and wait for you to find out how he could avoid talking to you. He certainly couldn’t choose another direction. “What’s going on?”, you asked, moving closer to him. In response, he glared at you and said nothing. “I like you.”, you nudged him jokingly and smiled with a false, knowledgeable look. Daryl stopped. “I don’t think you should go, y'know?”

“What?” You raised an eyebrow and looked at him in confusion. “What does that have to do with it?”

“You don’t know if you will find your group, you will only take unnecessary risks.”

You shook your head. “I will not let them go, they are my family, maybe they are looking for me now, they shouldn’t be far away, the least I can do is to look for them.”

“They’re in a group, you’re alone, if they really value you, they wouldn’t want you to do it on your own, they’d prefer you to be safe, probably even far away from them Y/N.” You shrugged as if you didn’t care. “I will search for them. Sorry.” Then Daryl lost control. “Damn, Y/N! Are you fucking serious or just stupid as fuck? You don’t even know if they’re still alive!”, he shouted and took a few steps toward you. “For fucks sake! They may have been abducted, they may have decided to leave. They could have been attacked! From the living or from the dead! You ain’t that dumb, are you? Risking your life for them now, even you’re here with us, is just a lot of damn fucking bullshit!”

Your cheeks stained with a barely visible blush beneath the light, sun-tanned skin. Your eyebrows had contracted and your mouth tightened your lips. “Thanks for the encouragement, you bastard! What do you expect me to do, what do you lose when I go? These people took me in, we lived together for years, you fucking asshole!”

“I-…” Daryl shook his head.

“What do you expect from me, Dixon, what do you think I should do!”

“I expect you to stay, goddamn it! Ain’t a safe place with our group enough or do you really wanna stay alone in hope to find your people like those rotten ass bastards walking around here!” The statement remained indefinitely between you both and briefly you two remained silent. “Just stay… We’ll be your family, it would be good for me and for the others if you stayed.”, the man said suddenly, his voice low and slow. He avoided your gaze and seemed focused. Nature had never been so interesting as it was right now. You opened your mouth to speak, amazed at the turn the events had taken. Daryl raised his head to look into your eyes, but you pointed to something behind him. The man turned and at the same moment he reached for the crossbow and cursed the thorns that prevented him for the time being. When he finally shivered, you had already reached the Walker who trotted off. You stood in front of it, holding your hands over your mouth, your eyes sparkling with tears. Daryl looked from you to the Walker.

“I knew her… Ofelia…”, you murmured, lowering your hands. There was no sign of great decomposition on her skin, she just looked emaciated and she had those cold and empty eyes… Daryl glanced at you. You had pulled a knife from your belt but didn’t seem to want to use it. Your face was marked by a mixture of sadness and compassion. The man pointed to his crossbow. “Y/N.”, he called. “If you want to do that, it’s time, otherwise I’ll do it.” You seemed to be back in reality from your trance. You blinked, turned the knife in your sweaty hands and nodded briefly. “I will do it.” You approached the Walker, who amplified his groan and reached out to grasp it. Then you killed Ofelia by ramming the blade into her skull as gently as possible. The living dead collapsed instantly. You took her in your arms and gently laid her down, closing her eyes and putting her hands in her lap. Finally, you stroked the woman’s cheek. You seemed relieved to have killed her.

“I’m sorry Y/N…” Daryl stayed with you all the time, like a silent but always present bodyguard. “We should go back…”

You had gotten up and had begun to look around, without bothering Daryl with your eyes. You had a resolute look, as if you had decided to do something that had delayed you too long. “The others should be near.”, Daryl said. Suddenly you put your hands around your mouth and shouted. “Nick!” You began to walk, to look around, to hear and to call again. “Madison! Travis!”

Daryl cursed again and ran to you. “What the hell are you doing! Are you crazy?” He grabbed your arms and pulled your hands away from your face. “Do you want to attract all Walkers here?”

“Leave me alone!”

“Shut the fuck up!”, Daryl said angrily.

The two of you have delivered a small fight. Daryl tried to keep you still, but you fell. Suddenly you had your hands free. You pushed Daryl away to drop again and ran away.

“Alicia, Travis, where are you, it’s me, Y/N, I’m here!”

You scurried through the bush, seemingly untouched by the vegetation, plodding around as if you were in molasses. “Damn it, stop this bullshit!”, Daryl said and followed your gaze and ran after you, while you threw yourself on the ground on the remains of what looked like a camp.

“No… No… No… No… No…” You rummaged on the ground between the charred objects that had remained behind. Despair was seen in your eyes. You found a rope and a pair of shoes. Then you found a jacket. A light beige, worn and old jacket. You lifted the jacket from the ground with trembling hands and your eyes full of tears. At that moment, you collapsed while the rest of the group reached you and Daryl, attracted by the screams. You held the jacket in your hands and wept, pressing the cloth against your body as if protecting the jacket. The others in the group watched silently.

How should they deal now with this situation?


	5. Chapter 5

Carl didn’t know if it was the fault of the apocalypse… When Judith was born she didn’t look like the happiest girl in the world. She didn’t laugh often, watching the people and the surrounding area with a certain amount of mistrust. In short, she already understood everything about this life. When the group returned to the base, she was the first to meet her brother, father, and the others with a faint smile as if relieved to see them return. For a while she enjoyed the adults’ attention, every smile and the flattering looks. Judith stepped back and watched as the attentions abruptly moved away from her. In fact, she hoped things would return to normal with her father’s return. He would stand in the middle of the room and explain that she was her child, that she was the one and inimitable and that they had to worship her. “Daddy!”, she screamed and ran to Rick. Rick picked her up and was pleased to see that she weighed more and more. “How did it go? Did you check if everything was alright?” She nodded, preferring not to answer. That evening, everyone decided to take a break, and all the animals that Daryl hunted were cooked in cans that Glenn and Carol had found with some of the fruits they had picked. The necessary presentations were made and you were introduced to the rest of the group. The others gave you nothing more than a lukewarm greeting, but they knew that if Rick had welcomed you, you would have to be someone to trust. You were not disappointed in your turn, as you already were after you had to kill Ofelia. In the middle of the evening, you clutched the beige jacket you had taken from the ruined camp. The group considered what had happened to the two parties when they were separated. Everyone found out that others had something to tell, something to be happy, to still be together. You settled into something that looked like a little library. Nothing but a small colored room with many shelves full of books. Judith was also set up in a kind of game room, as toys were scattered everywhere. You crouched in a corner and closed your eyes to sleep but didn’t notice that someome had a persistent look and watched you closely. Daryl hadn’t left you alone for a moment the entire evening. “And how is the girl?”,Carol asked suddenly, when she was sure that you were sleeping. “It’s okay besides the circumstances…”, Daryl said quickly. Rick gave him a quick look and then nodded. “She helped us, she’s an honest person, but she lost her group… They’re probably all dead.”

“So she stays with us?”, Glenn asked curiously.

“Yeah, we can trust Y/N.” The group was getting ready for the night and Carol had taken the first night shift. Glenn and Maggie had settled near the baths without disturbing the others at night. Michonne, Rick, Carl and Judith were in the main room next to the entrance. Usually, Carol slept in the library and told Daryl he could settle there.

“Hey, I’m laying blankets down here.”, she said softly, opening a bright red metal cupboard and laying a few blankets on the ground.

“But you have to sleep without a pillow.”

Daryl snorted and looked critically into the room. You were surrounded by low shelves, and your heavy and regular breathing made Daryl understand that you were already asleep. You lay curled up on the cold floor and had as sole heat source this beige jacket. Daryl pulled a new blanket out of the closet and approached you under Carol’s gaze, covering you without waking you up. Your features spread in your sleep and you turned your head to the other side. Daryl moved away when he heard your voice mumbling a bit. At first he thought you were thanking him. Then he heard it more closely.

“Nick…”, you mumbled and Daryl stiffened. He stood for a moment in the middle of the room, a feeling of discomfort spreading in his stomach. Then he walked away and picked up the blanket Carol had taken out for him. The woman immediately understood what was wrong with him.

“We will not go back.”

“I think we suggested that.”

“There is no turning back, Atlanta and Georgia are lost. We know that.”

“The other places are too.”

“But we can’t stay here, it’s too dangerous!”

The conversation between the group had lasted a while the next morning. For you, they seemed to be good people, but they had some communication problems.

“Maybe, in the north-…”

You cleared your throat. “I have an idea…”, you said weakly but nobody has listened to you. “I said I have an idea!”, you said louder. Everyone turned to you and you immediately felt uncomfortable. You played with the zipper of the found jacket and coughed. “We could do what my group had planned at the time… We go to the next river and take a boat, we follow the stream and it will lead us to the sea.”

“Do you have any experience with that?” Maggie asked and you shrugged. “Eat at will, fish as much as we like and there are only a few Walkers in the water, and we can see plunderers and free people from a distance, and there is a chance to prepare a defense.”

“If you are so sure, what did you do on land?”,Michonne asked in astonishment.

“We went down from the boat for supplies, we traveled a bit and found a community, but we were attacked, and when we ran away, we were lost, we went in the opposite direction for a long time, but actually wanted to go back to the sea. Then Travis had this idea with a river, and if we go with the current, we’ll eventually end up at the sea.”

“And where is the next river?”, Rick asked with his hands on his hips. “The largest is the Río Bravo del Norte, the Rio Grande, it flows into the Gulf of Mexico. The others are tributaries, they wouldn’t be big enough to navigate in peace. We would risk getting stuck in one of them.” The members of the group looked almost dazed, but at the same time were astonished by your knowledge.

“But in which area are we?”, Carl asked.

“Monterrey.”, you answered quickly. The boy looked excited and you smiled for the first time in days. “We will go.”

“Wait, we too?” Michonne watched all members of the group and everyone looked at Rick. The man was trying to figure out how dangerous it could be. On the other hand, what choice did they have? They had never tried this kind of solution before. It couldn’t be worse than trying it somewhere else.

Several days had passed and the group almost thought they would reach the Rio Grande on foot from a quarter outside the big city of Monterrey… One evening, when they went to sleep in a small house sheltered from prying eyes, they secured the surroundings. In the garage of this house was a truck, a motorhome and two motorcycles. It was clear from the beginning that anyone who dared to get on any of the motorcycles would have attracted Daryl Dixon’s anger. From then on the journey became much easier. To Daryl’s surprise, you grabbed the other bike. The group arrived a few days later near the big river. You all had to avoid some roads because they were full of Wlakers and so you made a longer trip than originally planned. Rick stopped the small convoy as it approached the evening. You were in a more rural area. The place you were in had a few isolated huts with farmland, a handful of buildings around a central square. Daryl and Rick broke the doors of a shop and the group gathered there. It was a real pleasure for Michonne when she found existing supplies of hygiene products. There were a few Walker in the store, but they were eliminated immediately. As it was your habit, you left the group and settled in the far corner. Everything about you said you didn’t want to be disturbed. Rick had told the others what had probably happened to your group and they had decided together to leave you alone. You didn’t talk much, except to say what was needed, but nothing more. The group respected your decisions, but those who knew you before the rest of the others hoped that it would soon be over. Carl wanted to do something for you, but he knew that nobody could really help you at this time. Daryl woke up late at night. Judging by the position of the moon, it was too early to begin his watch, but he rubbed his eyes and couldn’t fall asleep again. The silhouette of you, who had offered yourself for the first night shift, walked slowly from one side of the store to the other without approaching the group while they sleep. Daryl looked at you for a while. You walked gracefully and with a certain audacity, as if you were calibrating the steps to accommodate yourself to your quiet suffering. You always wore this jacket, too big for you and in that beige color. The man sighed, stood up and reached you near the lowered windows.

“It’s not your turn yet.”, you whispered and saw him coming.

“Can’t sleep.” Daryl grabbed a nearby chair and placed it beside you in front of the entrance. “I don’t want to wait until tomorrow, believe me.”,Daryl said softly in your direction. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw you pull one corner of your mouth slightly upwards. “I don’t care.”

“I don’t understand how you can do that.”

You sighed. “It reminds me of normal things, like when I went shopping with my friends and stuff, we used to go to stores like this, not to those big shopping malls.”

“Who is Nick?” Immediately after he uttered those words, Daryl wanted to cut his tongue out. You turned abruptly to him, a mixture of surprise and fear on your face. “What?” Daryl hesitated, but finally decided to speak. “He’s in your group, I know, but who was he?”

“Why do you ask?”

The man shrugged and began to chew nervously on his thumbnail. “You said his name last night while you slept.” You remained silent, your eyes lowered and your arms crossed over your chest.

“Okay, sorry, forget it.”

“No, that doesn’t matter.”, you sighed, bent your head to the side and began to examine the jacket. “That was his jacket, he could change his clothes and get new ones so many times, but he always kept that disgusting jacket with him.”, you said, snorting and giggling.

“So I’m not the only one who thinks the jacket has a shitty-ass color.”

“No, not at all, I’ve always told him, we’ve all told him, I never understood why he insisted on keeping it.” Shortly thereafter, it was quiet again, but then Daryl decided to ask the direct question. A question that had visibly annoyed him since he had heard that name. This Nick, whoever he was, gave Y/N a lot of grief. Without even being here, he slipped into Y/N’s dreams. And even if Daryl didn’t want to admit it, he wouldn’t have cared to be the one whose name escaped those lips. “Was he your boyfriend?”

You looked at him for a moment before answering uncertainly. “No. We were good friends.” You looked at Daryl for a few seconds. “He was the only one who had preserved some humanity, he knew how to defend himself, he knew how to analyze the situation and act accordingly to protect our family, but when things got worse, he was the only one who could really relax so we felt at home, as if everything was still normal, and let me understand that the most important thing was that we were still united.”

“A good guy, in short.”

You snorted a little again. “He had his mistakes, let’s make that clear, but I really liked him and I still worry…” You turned back to Daryl and smiled slightly. He couldn’t hold that look for long. It was a look that wasn’t reserved for him, it was destined for someone who could no longer receive it. It would have been unfair… And then he wanted to take a look at Y/N, who wasn’t really reserved for him? No, he didn’t want that.

“Go to sleep.”, he finally said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m not tired.”

You nodded and stood up. “Thanks.”, you said, holding out her hand. “Good night.” Daryl remained alone, the darkness around him, and the sound of inner loneliness filled his ears. An uncomfortable feeling penetrated him, the awareness of why he felt that relief in his chest. Even if she had not said it, it was clear that Y/N felt something for this boy. Daryl’s stomach was contracted by malaise and at the same time with relief. The relief that Nick was not there. The immense, selfish, disgusting relief he felt when he knew someone was dead… Maybe because he didn’t know him, or maybe because he liked Y/N more than he wanted to admit, but the damn relief was there and he couldn’t expel them. Still, he also knew that he didn’t want to tell Y/N what he felt for her.

“Something’s wrong with me…”, he said to himself, staring at an undefined spot in the room all night.


	6. Chapter 6

Daryl raised his head and shook him in the direction of the others. “He is dead.”

Rick put his hands on his hips and looked around sadly. “Okay… then let’s move on.”

“What? Dad, we can not leave him here.” Carl was following his father, who had already left. “We can not slow down anymore, so let’s move on.” Carl snorted, returned to Daryl and shook his head. “Is he really dead?” The man wiped his hands on his shirt. “Yes, and the boat will not start if we can not find spare parts.”

“We could.” The boy looked thoughtfully at another boat, which was also at the dock. It was big enough for everyone, but they couldn’t start it despite the keys.

“It isn’t worth it.” You joined them and looked at the dirty, battered fishing boat. “There will be other boats here.”

“What if we could find a nice ship?”, Carl asked with a smile.

“Then we would have cracked the jackpot.”, you smiled, your eyes half closed and one hand outstretched to protect yourself from the sun. You couldn’t help but think what would happen if Travis and the others had been here instead of Rick’s group. Maybe they could have started the boat again, along with Victor Strand. By the time you had traveled together, he had been the mechanic and captain on board, insisting that everyone learn how to control the basic mechanisms. You hadn’t learned much, but Madison had escaped and Ofelia understood something, too. The others seemed to be doing nothing more than helping to hand over things like the screwdriver and start the engine. “Can you do that anyway?” Daryl stepped out of the shadows with a grin on his face.

“Partially.”, you snorted. “And just because you never laugh, that doesn’t mean nobody else has to help me anyway.” As if in an automatic gesture, you tightened the beige jacket and accelerated your pace to move away from Daryl. His eyes darkened. He checked how many cigarettes were left over from the motel adventure. Only five. But that seemed like the perfect moment to calm the nerves a little. He lit one and held it between his lips a little before pulling. The taste of the smoke was initially sharp, but then left a pleasant aftertaste on the palate. He closed his eyes and enjoyed the moment for a short time. Although Daryl was a smoker, he was rather that kind of person who does something, even though he knows it’s not good, even though finding cigarettes has become increasingly difficult. Better to light a cigarette anyway than to think of Y/N tying the damn jacket between her fingers. What kind of person would wear something like that? Of course it was not the garment, but what it represented. You touched the jacket as if stroking someone’s cheek, as if you were cuddling in a warm embrace. At the same time you looked daintier when you wore the jacket, and not just because it was a male jacket. Your whole mind seemed to have withdrawn. Something had broken in you, and Daryl was afraid that it was something impossible to rebuild. “Can I?” Carol reached out and Daryl held out cigarette. “Stop it.”

“Thanks.” He looked perplexed. “I didn’t know you were doing that shit too.” Carol shrugged. “It’s never been a bad habit, but sometimes I have to calm my nerves.” She smiled in his direction and then looked back to the rest of the group. With a wave of her hand holding the stub, Carol pointed to Y/N. “You like her.” Daryl gasped, looked at Carol and her sight alone relaxed him. It was Carol. She wouldn’t bother him with something like that. “I don’t know.”, he answered only. “You don’t know or don’t want to believe it?” Daryl didn’t answer. “Do you remember the prison? The first night I asked you to fuck with me.” Maybe she scolded him… But no, he couldn’t believe that she was so upset about him! Why did she bring this story back? This conversation was not suitable for him, he felt uncomfortable. Anything that meant expressing what he felt or even expressing the relationship between two people made him feel uncomfortable. He had always wondered why words were used. The words were overrated. The time and gestures that have taken place over the years have spoken a thousand times more. To hell with the words! “So what?”

“You didn’t say anything, I’m not saying it was bad, I think we’re both not meant to be together in that sense.”, Carol said with a laugh, a sincere, fleeting laugh from a woman who intervened and knows a secret that Daryl doesn’t want to admit. Carol looked for his gaze, but he focused his eyes on something else. She already knew enough about him and clearly realized what was wrong with him. For Carol, Daryl was one of those heavy books, with a complex history, but with big and easily decipherable characters. “So far things went well, as it is.”

“It went well this time, yes, but it does not mean it’s alright all the time.” Finally, Daryl turned and looked at her: “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you like this girl and maybe she likes you too, you should do something about it.”

“I told you, I don’t know if I-…”

“Daryl, don’t talk nonsense, I see it very well that you’re interested, you give her a certain amount of attention, attention that you have to no one else.”The man snorted again. “Do not deny it, you know it’s useless.”, Carol said, snapping her lips while Daryl sat down on the floor. “The point is, there’s never been anything between us because you’ve never done anything about it, you’ve always been left alone, people will hold you a hand, but you have to grab them, you you have to do your part and nothing happens if we do nothing to make it happen.”

“I understand, but nobody gives me anything here,”Daryl said, still looking at Y/N while Carol started talking again.

“So you have to do it, hold out your hand and wait for someone to grab it.” Who knows how many outstretched hands he had ignored in his life, who knows how many passed him without him even noticing. Daryl knew how many times he had reached out to someone to build a relationship. But it was time to reach for a hand if he wanted life to be worth living. “How long should I wait?”

“You have to decide that until you feel it’s worth it.”The man said nothing, but got up and continued along the riverbank. There was nothing to say. Carol was right, he knew that. Not that it was new, she had been right with several things since he knew her. But the Dixon brothers make their own arrangements and need none other than themselves. No bonds, no expectations, no disappointments. But things had changed and it was time to look ahead.

The search had developed towards the evening. The group took a break in a boat suitable for everyone. Apart from the destroyed fishing vessel, you had found a few motorboats, too small and practically useless without fuel, then another workboat with a big hole in the engine room. Since none of them could really fish except you, you all decided that the quickest way to get food was the usual old plunder. You were on the edge of a medium-sized city and there were several places to find food. The tall buildings, one next to the other, the stores lined up like soldiers, the paved streets radiating the suffocating heat. Even you had to surrender to the burning heat and to take off the jacket you had been wearing for a few days. You tied her around your waist and stayed in your top. “We should hurry, we don’t know how many Walkers there are, and we’ll be back in half an hour.”, Rick said to the rest of the group. You all parted, everyone went in a different direction. You made your way to a grocery store Rick had already pointed out. You destroyed the rusty lock, but had to break the glass to open the door and at the same moment you regretted it. The stench was indescribable. The fresh food was bad and bawled there for a long time. The smell made you fall back in disgust, causing you to retreat. You hurried off panting and leaned against a building to catch your breath. You preferred to go to the nearest bar when you noticed a movement nearby. At the end of the street, Daryl moved secretly. You raised an eyebrow and with a slight back pressure released yourself from the wall and crossed the street, looking first to the right and then to the left. Actually stupid… After all, traffic was no longer a problem. It was dark inside the deserted bar and the light of the sun lit the entrance. “Daryl?” You took a few steps into the room. Out of habit, more than for real defense, you took your machete from your belt. “What did you come for?” Sounds from the back of the store stopped you. Suddenly it let out a huge roar, amplified by the silence of the room. When the silence returned, you reached a familiar sound. The sound that brought forth the dead, that line of rage, the growl of a desperate wild beast.

You pulled out your flashlight and pointed it to the floor of the shop. You saw a shelf on the floor and saw the head of a Walker and aimed the beam of light at the rest of his body. The Walker had removed a leg from his body while the bust of the piece of furniture had been crushed and held still. You could see the rotting body moving toward his next victim. A little further away was Daryl… Without much thought you rammed the machete into the head of the Walker. “Are you hurt?”

“Fuck. Just help me, we have to lift this thing.” The man turned his head away from the smell of the dead man beside him. He lifted the piece of furniture as if lifting weights. You flanked him and held the shelf up with considerable effort until Daryl slipped out. His left leg remained immobile. You let go and didn’t care about the noise. As you turned to look at the man, he slowly looked at you with an annoyed grimace on his face. “You didn’t break anything, did you?”

“As if that were the damn case…”

“Let me have a look.” You came closer, but Daryl began to move away. “Come on, I will not hurt you.” Reluctantly, Daryl took off his shoe and sock. In the light of the flashlight he could see your outlines. Daryl paused to observe you for a moment. You fumbled at his ankle, moving his foot and asking him when it hurt him. Slowly you both hobbled out of the store, Daryl holding his shoe and clinging to your other arm. You supported him and made sure there was no danger in the area. You were waiting for the return of the others, who had been luckier with the search for supplies. That night you all ate sardines, cucumbers, drank some drinks, and the next day Rick was ready for another plunder in town. To stay another day would have been a good way for Daryl to recover where Rick agreed. The next morning the man’s ankle was less swollen, but it would have been a bad idea to let him go. “Y/N…” Rick approached you, turned away briefly and lowered his face to his best friend. “Stay here with Daryl, make sure he doesn’t make an effort.”

“Why me?”

“You’re the only one who really cares.”

You snorted. “I don’t think so, what about Carol?”

“I need Carol to come with us, stay here and don’t allow him to leave the camp, it could get worse and it would take twice as long for him to get better, I want to be sure he’s back in tomorrow able to take to the streets.” You wavered, but since Rick gave orders in this group, you nodded. He patted you on the shoulder, as if you were already a good friend he had once met in the bar, and then left with the others. You sighed and glanced at everyone who was with you. Maggie slumbered. Judith played with a train and some dolls that Carl had found and taken to kindergarten. Not far from her sat Daryl looked at her thoughtfully. “Very pleased, I’m the babysitter.” You sat down next to him and smiled widely.

The man rubbed his hands. “I suppose Rick thought one person wasn’t enough to keep an eye on his daughter.”

“No, I didn’t stay here because of her, I’m here for you, he thinks you will not rest if no one is watching you.”, you told Daryl. “What did you do in this bar?” Daryl shot you a quick glance and tried to figure out what kind of mood you were in. He looked at Judith and chewed on his thumbnail. Curious, reluctant, as if he were forcing himself, he put a hand in his pocket and pulled out a portable music player. He handed it to you. “I found this in a house a few days ago, and that-…”he added, rummaging in his pocket and pulling out a CD from a well-known rock band. “And I found some batteries in the bar.” You looked up at him and accepted the gifts with a confused expression on your face, as if you didn’t understand why he gave them to you, or as if you were unfamiliar with those gestures.

“I thought you might like it, y'know… Since you mentioned something like that before.”, Daryl shrugged and minimized the gesture. You looked gloomier than before, and he almost regretted giving you this gift. But you suddenly smiled and looked from the music player to Daryl and back. “I… I… I don’t know what to say.”

“Tell me if you like it.”

You hesitated and stopped in the middle of the gesture, but finally reached out to him, hugged him briefly and kissed him on the cheek. You continued to smile as you moved away, holding the music player in your hands, as if the world was no longer too bad with this little present from Daryl Dixon.


	7. Chapter 7

Daryl slipped into his dreams without asking for permission, like a powerful scent that suddenly leaps into his nose. It is impossible to control it, to stop it without stifling it. At first he dreamed of silly things, hunting visions, Walkers, old memories, in which Y/N appeared as an anachronistic intruder, but soon the nature of the dreams changed. In his nocturnal visions, Y/N were kissed and touched. It was never explicit, but Daryl didn’t need a sketch to figure out what they were doing. For some time he had had the pleasant habit of thinking about falling asleep. How would Y/N be presented in this night, in his dreams? With a nice long dress, as beautiful as her face? Or with the underwear she wore at the motel? Maybe with the normal clothes she had on every day. It would have been the best. To undress her body would have been his privilege…

In all honesty Daryl therefore couldn’t say that he wasn’t entirely to blame for his situation with Y/N. If he hadn’t wanted, he would have tried not to think about it. He would take Carol aside and perhaps even out of frustration accept the suggestion she had given him long ago. They would have fucked and maybe he would have stopped having those dreams… Or maybe not. Carol would never have slept with him, he knew that. And besides, he had no intention of taking Y/N out of his dreams. He thought of her before going to sleep, hoping to dream of her. It was his fault that now he couldn’t help but follow her with his eyes, wherever she went, when he was tormented by the desire to touch her, to kiss her, to possess her. When he woke up the next morning, you were gone. Daryl couldn’t help but ignore his aching ankle, get up, and look around the building. The first way led him into the basement of the shop, knowing that the rest of the group was still on the way.

When he got downstairs, Daryl saw a door. A room full of pipes and valves that delivered gas, water and who knows what else in the shop where you all had taken refuge. Daryl took a step forward, leaving the door close behind him. But he was trapped. Because the door opened only from the outside and nobody knew that he was there. So yeah, he was definitely good at ending up in shitty situations… Daryl couldn’t even see anything. The first time he knocked on the door, he tried to find out exactly where he was and searched the room to see if there was anything useful in it. After he had exhausted every idea, he crouched in a corner and began to wait. What else did he have left, except to curse himself for this stupid idea out of fear… He was almost asleep when the door slowly opened.

“Daryl, are you here?”

The man jumped from the ground and threw himself in the direction of the door. A figure had slipped into the room and stood in the door with only one hand holding the door open. Suddenly the person charged Daryl with something that looked like a knife in his hand.

“No no no!” The man ran to the entrance, one hand holding your wrist before you could use the knife, the other holding the door tight. But she was already closed. “Fuck!” Daryl shouted, banging his fist against the door. “Are you crazy?”In the darkness, your voice was shrill. “You’re crazy, did you want to fucking kill me?”

“I thought you were a Walker, we were all looking for you for at least two hours, what are you doing down here in the dark anyway?”

“What we’re going to do together! Waiting for someone to get us out of this shit.” Daryl recognized that he was very close to you, probably closer than he should be. He had pressed you between himself and the door and when it had closed, he had come even closer to you. “What? Are we trapped here?” You struggled, turned and felt for a grip that didn’t exist. You reached out to explore everything around you and realized that you were surrounded on both sides by machines and boxes. You started to sweat easily and your breathing became heavy. “I can’t fucking believe it!”, Daryl shouted as he angrily hit one of the walls. “What do we do now?”

“Nothing, we’re waiting for someone to find us.”

“How long have you been here?” The man shrugged, then realized that it was too dark to see his gestures at all. “Don’t know, one hour, maybe two.”

You sighed and turned to face Daryl, but he stopped you. He stretched out his arms, one hand banging against the door, the other bumping against your shoulder. “Shit… Sorry.” Daryl quickly withdrew his hand. “It’s okay…”

“Don’t move.” Carefully, he gently raised his arms and raised his hands higher. He met your cheeks, went down to your neck and left his hands on your shoulders. Your back pressed against his chest. Daryl seemed to feel a slight shiver on your body. He put his arm in front of you and squeezed you briefly.

“What are you doing?”

“We’ll sit down, don’t know when the others will find us, but if they at least make themselves felt, we’ll hear it.” Daryl exchanged his seat and found himself with his back to the door. He slid down, holding you and pushing you down with him. In those few moments the feeling, when your soft hips were pressed against him, seemed very present. Protecting you was the most natural thing he had done in months. You both sat down on the floor and Daryl carefully released you. “Is it comfortable?”

“Gotta be.” You straightened your legs better in the little room you had. Daryl felt you ass rubbing against him for a moment. It was a fleeting and fast, a moment that was over so quickly, but it was enough to turn him on a little. He cursed himself and his damn genitals as you lay down between his legs and lay there. Luckily, you seemed oblivious, and Daryl forced himself to calm himself. It wouldn’t have been an advantage if you had discovered it. You leaned hesitantly against his chest. The man raised his chin slightly and pushed aside the thick hair that disturbed him a little. “Do you want me to move?”

“Nah, don’t move…”, he sighed against your shoulders. It was as if you were in another world where gestures, words and thoughts no longer mattered. Daryl slid his hands from your arms, but went back to caress your neck and smelled inconspicuously on your hair. “Daryl…”

“Should I stop?”

You swallowed. “I don’t know…” He remained uncertain for a while, his hands still resting on your shoulders. He leaned forward slightly and put his lips to your neck. He wanted to kiss you, but it was a far too unpleasant gesture for him. He confined himself to bringing his face close to yours, and from time to time touching it with his lips. The neck, the cheeks, the jaw. He slid his palms down your entire back until he met the beige jacket you had tied around your waist. Driven a little by instinct, a little inappropriate rage aimed at the jacket, Daryl put his hands forward and began to release the jacket to remove it.

“Wait.”

Your hands blocked him. The way you had held to the old thing, wearing it as your protector, as if it were an emotional chastity belt, irritated him. Immediately he released the jacket, pulled his hands back and dropped them by his sides. At that moment, he would have liked to go out there, go hunting, or kill the living dead, just to forget that embarrassing moment. Everything, instead of staying with you, would have been better right now. You turned as far as you could into this tiny room and groped for his face to find his chest. He wore no vest, just a sleeveless shirt that was slightly open at the front. You could feel the warm skin and hair on his chest. “I need some time.”

“But you don’t know how much you have left…”

“No.”

Daryl was quiet for a while and wanted to think about what he should do. “I’m not famous for my patience, but I can wait, I just want you to tell me the truth.”

You waited silently, knowing in part what he would ask. “Did you have a story together, you and Nick?” You sighed. “We were friends, good friends, he was the best friend I ever had, even with all this mess, we got along, we could support each other, I miss him so much…” You hesitated as if you were afraid that Daryl might get angry. “I know what you want to know. Yes, sometimes we had a thing. We had sex together… Is that going to change anything?”

“We all have a past, I just wanted you to tell me how it is.”

You broke into a nervous laugh. “I was a bit melodramatic, I think.”

“You’ve lost a people you love, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Suddenly the door behind you both opened. Daryl looked at the glare coming from the stairs. He felt your body disappear from his and saw now the person who was standing at the door. It was Carl.

“Carl, you definitely didn’t miss anything or we would have stayed in here until tonight.”

“Oh, let me imagine.” When you left, Daryl was also on his feet again. Carl grinned as he looked at him. “I bet you would have loved to stay here longer.”, he laughed. Daryl didn’t speak to anyone the rest of the day, blocking any interaction. The next morning should just start, so he could forget what happened in this place and they could all move on…

As you all found a boat later in the day, it was perfect. Big enough to accommodate you all, but not too much to be attacked and defeated. It was old and dirty enough that you could even think it was abandoned and useless. It was a boat for tourists. It was six or seven meters wide and about thirty meters long. Outside there were some rows of seats that didn’t need much space. In the covered area there was a tiny bar, four tables nailed to the floor, and separately the helmsman’s cabin. Downstairs, usually closed to tourists, there was the engine room and a cupboard. There was room for everyone, although privacy wasn’t really the strength of this ship. The keys were nowhere to be seen, so Daryl set out to find a solution. He set to work while the others searched for useful things for the journey. For a while, you looked around the deck and glanced at Judith and Michonne. It had been twenty minutes since Daryl worked on the firing mechanism, accompanied by Carol. When you came in, he was lying on his stomach under the bridge, while Carol looked at him with the usual pragmatic expression, without much understanding. “Give me the star screwdriver.”

“Here.” The man fiddled for a moment and then held him back to Carol. “Too large.” You, who now knew the tools, took him and looked for another toolbox. You added some electrical vices and an insulating tape. “Here.” When Daryl heard your voice, he stopped working. You backed away from the stairs, Daryl lowered his eyes and left the room in a disturbing way, followed by an attentive look from Carol. “Need something else?”,the woman asked without pausing to look at you. “Not at the moment.”

“I’ll be right back.”, Daryl said and left. You had removed the beige jacket from your waist and put it under your knees. “He must have been a special person.” You looked up, identified Carol’s gaze, then looked back at the jacket. “Is that so obvious?”

“As long as he was important to you…”

“He was… He is…”

Carol sighed. “I know this pain, you’ll wonder if you can do something to save that person, and the answer you’re almost certain will not be reassuring…”

“Will it stay that way forever?”

“I know it’s going to get weaker and weaker, but you will not forever fall into mourning, you’ll find other reasons to survive, other than survival itself.”You couldn’t help snorting. “Just because I’m alive, I didn’t choose to live.”

“You decide to accept Rick’s help, and you’re part of that group, this family… These decisions are up to you, you decide when you want someone in your life.”, Carol said smiling, walking away and you followed the woman with your eyes until she disappeared.


	8. Chapter 8

The group had become accustomed to the rhythm of the current and the days on the boat had taken over the routine. Every day you fished. With the end of civilization and large-scale fishing, the freshwater fauna seemed to multiply. Each time you lowered the bait, the hook appeared a little later with an attached fish. You all ate so much fish that they could not stand it anymore. When Judith first saw the group of caught fish, she began to cry as she saw the animals desperately fighting and hoping for survival. Since she already ate whatever they ate, they still hadn't told her that their meals consisted largely of the animals that once gasped for air. Even if Michonne was searching for a way to tell her without angering her or getting her to become a vegetarian. Every morning they collected the water from the river and boiled it to purify it, and they cooked fish on the remnants of the embers. It had been at least a couple of weeks since you had traveled this way, and Rick had decided to set up camp again on the edge of the river.

"We need more food, red meat, carbohydrates, vegetables, we have plenty of water and we don't use it, we could cook something to make it last longer..."

"And Judith needs new clothes.", Maggie pointed out.

"She has nothing to do, I'm afraid that if she starts exploring the boat she will only have weapons and knives to play with, she could get seriously injured.", Glenn added.

"You're right, Glenn. Anything else?"

You raised your hand as if you were in class and Rick was the teacher.

"Towels."

"Okay." The man looked around. Carl shifted his weight from one foot to the other and glanced at you.

"Carl?"

"Maybe we could get some books-...", he finally said. "...-for Judith."

Carl didn't think it would ever really use anything, but the school was missing. Still, it was different. He would give everything for an hour at school.

"School books?"

"Yes." Carl looked at you. "Maybe you can help me choose which one."

You smiled and approached him. "What were your favorite subjects?"

"None really, but don't tell my dad, even if it does not matter anymore..."

You two went around, and before you disappeared on the other side of the boat, you put an arm on Carl's lean shoulders, who was a few inches taller than you. You looked like an older sister with your little brother, tall and relaxed, yet Daryl wondered to what extent he could be jealous of a boy like Carl. You wanted to be with Carl. One thing that undoubtedly made you pathetic, at least in Daryl's eyes.

An approaching group of Walkers roamed the schoolyard and prevented entry. "There are too many, we can't kill them all."

"Maybe we could find a side entrance."

"Or maybe a city library, something else."

You snapped your lips. "I don't want to risk returning home empty-handed, I promised Carl I would bring him something to read, it's nice he wants to learn, he'll teach Judith everything a survivor needs to know."

Daryl watched the Walkers they had noticed. They were so rotten that it didn't seem possible to realize that they were once human beings.

"Why would anyone want to know what it was like before? It's damn depressing."

You gave him an annoyed look and approached the fence. You stepped against it to attract the Walkers, they came from everywhere, in large quantities. Civilians, but also several in uniform, some of those who looked like teachers. They must have been there for a long time. Many didn't even have skin on their bones.

"Holy shit." You walked around the fence to find a flaw, but the living dead were everywhere. Daryl and you went to the back of the building and found out that one side of the gym was facing the street. However, access was prevented by a security door that can only be opened from the inside.

"Any idea?"

Daryl went to a window and looked inside. The windows were thick, but if he found something suitable, he could break them open. "We need a big rock, a tough stick, anything, we have to break those windows and enter." You both started to look around. It took longer than expected, and Daryl struggled to split the glass. The corridors were deserted, except for a few Walkers you sometimes crossed, luckily not as many as outside. After some research, you found the school library and stopped. You boldly wandered around the shelves, pulling out books and putting them back in their place. Daryl had to kill some Walkers, who were like parodies of bored students in the corridors. After he saw how a Walker suddenly appeared to attack him, Daryl decided to close the library door for more security. After a few minutes, he reached your desk and put a stack of books beside her. "And what's that stuff? Physics? Biology?"

"Looks like you're intelligent.", Daryl said, as if that was an answer to everything.

You began to leaf through the books Daryl had brought you to make a stack next to you.

"Did you like the school?"

Daryl looked absently at the books, didn't touch a single book and pretended that all these volumes were just something to look at. "No, hated it, left early because of Merle."

"Who is Merle?"

Daryl pursed his lips and turned to keep you from looking at him.

"Was my damn brother."

You didn't say anything and after a few minutes Daryl piled the books in his arms. The man laughed a little, as he had not done for some time, but tried to nip it in the bud, but without success.

"I bet you were one of those girls who just got good grades and who enjoyed having time for textbooks and probably your first boyfriend was one of the football team players."

You looked back at the books, a slight smile on your lips. "It's sadly true, I loved going to school and I got good grades, but I didn't like athletes.",you said, glancing at Daryl with a sidelong glance."So it was more practical and I could focus more on my career and on myself.", you smiled and went back to the desk, leaned against some books and watched Daryl thoughtfully. "I have so many, we have to at least halve them, the backpack is pretty heavy. I don't think there are other crazy people like us who are in search of literature during the Apocalypse. Apart from Travis, probably... ", you added in a low voice.

Daryl picked up a book from a pile. "Boring."

"How can you say that, did you read it?", you asked, sitting on the desk next to him, holding the book in your hands. "Don't know."

"You can read them if you want, books are things that are worth remembering the old world."

"What's this shit?" Daryl grabbed another book from the pile and started examining it. He was leaning on the desk and getting even closer to you. He hadn't realized it immediately, but when he saw you, he had to admit that he liked this recurring intimacy. It wasn't like two simple acquaintances with each other or just like two friends who were together. It was another kind of contact he liked to share with you. You kept your eyes lowered, but when you didn't hear him speak, you raised your head. You both looked at each other. His first instinct was to go away, but before he could, he remembered the moments in the basement of the store while you both were both locked up there. He had touched you gently... It had been a caress, as if he wanted to comfort you. It was time to kiss you, Daryl knew it. He should do it without much thought or he wouldn't try again. But what if you didn't want it? The man immediately rejected the thought from his head. You both don't come so close by chance... But to avoid the risk of a bad impression, it is better to be careful. He put a hand on your face, halfway between cheek and neck. He approached you easily, but without filling the space between you completely. The lips of you reached him a little later and formed a chaste kiss, which you stretched out as long as you could. You turned away from him, bit your lower lip and looked him in the eye. A few seconds passed and Daryl lost himself in this sensual movement. He kissed you again and in that moment he realized that he still held the book you talked about. He dropped it to the floor with a dull thud. He clasped your face with one hand, the other clutching your pelvis. You seemed to forget all the concerns you had had so far. First you had your hands on Daryl's chest, then you slid them over his back. You sat in front of him, surrounding him with your thighs to make her hug tighter. Your lips were soft and sensual. Daryl broke the kiss just to see it again. He ran his thumb over your lower lip, watched its fullness and then kissed you again. He clung to your hips as if to save you from this brutal world. Daryl put his hands over yout torso and stroked your breasts, your nipples stiffening immediately and this sent him a wave of arousal through his body. He ran his hands back to your hips and, without stopping to kiss you, he laid you slowly on the desk. From that moment he hesitated. He was excited, but he didn't know how much he should go to you. He was afraid that you didn't want it or that you hadn't considered it an erotic situation. Maybe it was just romantic kisses for you that exchanged, but he had a different impression. Daryl looked at you and noticed that your lips parted, an expression that seemed amused and satisfied. As if you had already left the most pleasant sensation in the world. And you chose him... He leaned forward to kiss the neck of you and you offered it to him and arched your back. For the first time, a light groan escaped your lips, nothing but a sigh of joy, but enough to excite Daryl even more. He pressed his pelvis against you. His erection was so obvious that you would probably recognize it immediately. He looked up to see your reaction and realized he had a half-open mouth as he considered the situation. You responded immediately with a small moan. "Daryl..."

"Do you want me to stop?", the man asked in pale imitation of your previous conversation.

"No...", you chuckled. Daryl sneered as well and lowered himself to kiss you again. But the sudden sound of a fall made you both jump up. You looked up the door but saw nothing and exchanged a look. "We should go.", said the man laboriously, moving away from you and turning away, suddenly overcome with embarrassment.

"Yes..." You arranged your bra and top, threw another pair of books in your backpack, ignoring the titles, and you both were preparing to leave.

It passed a few days before the borders of the river along which you sailed were thinned to show a different landscape than before. Carl looked up from a book and approached the parapet. "That's not possible...", he murmured in confusion, noticing that what initially looked like an open sea ended in the distance. Behind the water, the mountains stood out, but the morning mist didn't allow you to see them at first glance.

"There are still a few miles to the sea.", Michonne said, flanking him.

"That's a lake.", Glenn finally said.

The whole group had gathered on the bridge to see the lake. The lake opened before you, as if to give a taste of what the ocean would be like. For Rick and the others, it seemed too spacious, used to the troubled but relatively closed banks of the river. You breathed in fresh air and smiled. You weren't afraid, it reminded you of good times.

"We have to start the engine.", Rick said, heading for the cab. Until then, you had been driven by the current, following the logic that the river would bring them to the sea themselves. You had fuel on the ship but didn't want to waste it. So far, you have only used it when you had to move fast or when you had to navigate in shallow water. The group moved slowly to the rhythm determined by the currents. After all, you were in no hurry to get anywhere.

"The lake is shallow, the currents are deep, it is better to drive the engine, it will take less time and we will not risk running aground in the water." Carol took the helm after talking to Rick about the route. You came from a tributary and had to take another route. No one knew this lake, but you thought that if you were not very far from the coast, you would have found a way to continue your journey, a river that came out of the lake elsewhere. On the left side was a small island. Not much bigger than a field and overgrown with dense vegetation that rose in the middle.

"How will we know where we will end?", Carl asked.

"That's not important.", Maggie said.

Daryl moved some food between his lips from left to right. "The current is already leading us in the right direction, we are landing in the Gulf of Mexico or something."

The boy looked excited. "So that means we will live on an island?"

"Forget it!", you said quickly. "We will not think what it's like to spend our time on an island where you can drive around in half a day."

Carl snorted. "And where are we -...?" A violent thrust suddenly dropped everyone to the ground. Carl was face down on the deck of the boat.

"What happened?" Rick straightened and ran to the captain's cabin. "Did we hit something, did we get stuck?"

"No." Carol gestured to herself and didn't need another word. You had just wandered around the small island when a swarming mass of Walkers swam and growled in the water. Many did nothing but remain compassionately there, looking up to the sky and emitting their inconveniences. Others moved, especially when they collided. Some tried to go up the coast to climb the mainland. But many couldn't even get up. The rotting flesh was torn as soon as the water support left it. It was a grotesque sight.

"Is everything safe?", Rick asked when you were within earshot.

"I guess so. The Walkers can not climb, they are already completely decomposed. We can overcome them without danger, but it is better to avoid them. If one of them gets stuck in the engine, we have a problem. Personally, I have no idea how to fix it and if we get stuck in the middle of the lake... Well, it will be difficult to swim ashore."

At these words, Carol turned around and moved away from the Walkers. Carl, who had gotten up, had taken the binoculars to make sure that the living dead wouldn't attack or damage the boat, but suddenly lowered it again. "Dad, there's someone back there!"

Rick, who wanted to go on deck again, turned around.

"Come and have a look!"

The man approached the parapet and took the binoculars out of his son's hands. On one of the shores of the island, a group of several survivors tried to deal with the Walkers, which emerged from the water like ugly caricatures of sea monsters. They turned their backs on each other to protect each other, but it was clear that they were at a disadvantage. If they couldn't find a quick escape route, they wouldn't survive.

"What are we going to do?"

Rick hesitated, the usual sense of disgust in his stomach that he already knew well. There had been many of these moments since the beginning of the Apocalypse. Should he decide whether he addresses strangers, offers them shelter and trust and is human? Or should he choose his group, his family, his survival and be a murderer? Each time it was a dilemma, each time the decision was different and there was no way to learn from past mistakes. It was just a matter of luck. How should he know if they were good people?

"Nothing."

He didn't know it and nobody dared say anything. Apart from the Walkers below, they remained silent and turned away from the survivors on the island. The only one who didn't move was Carl, who left his binoculars and looked at the island with an undecipherable expression on his face.

"Can I?" You reached for the binoculars but the boy held it tight.

"Maybe it would be better not to look."

"When it's time to pay for my sins, I'll let you know what we're talking about here." You raised the binoculars to your eyes and after a second you sobbed. You started to move to the bottom of the ship to keep an eye on the island. You almost ran, but stopped at the top.

"Travis! Alicia!"

The group turned and looked at you, astonished and alarmed at the same time. The only one who understood the situation was Daryl. He ran to you and saw a look of serious anxiety on you face.

"Y/N... No."

When he reached you, you had already pushed him away. But the next moment you grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and pulled him to you. Your eyes were ice cold and determined.

"Trust me.", you said and jerked Daryl away, staggering backwards, realizing that the gesture was absolutely justified. He had no time to regain balance or notice what really happened. You used those few seconds to regain balance and jumped into the lake.

Disappeared in the sea of the living dead...


	9. Chapter 9

A muffled cry drew you near the trees. An angry Walker was over the victim he had just thrown to the ground. You threw yourself on the monster and buried the machete in his skull. You didn’t even have time to recognize the human being nearby. It fell pitifully to the ground and remained motionless and under it appeared a girl with long brown hair.

"Alicia…”

She looked up and her eyes widened in surprise. “Oh my god…” You two hugged each other tightly. None of you could believe that this really happened. “Let’s go the others, let’s get out of here! I have a boat, please let’s get out of here!”Alicia picked up the weapon she had lost in the fight with the living dead and put it back on her belt. “You have a boat? Where?”

“A little further out, they are waiting for us.”

“Who is waiting for us?”

“The group that saved me, we can trust them, I’ve been traveling with them for weeks, if not months.”

You both killed even more Walkers until you saw the silhouettes of Travis and Madison fighting back to back against the swarm of living dead. You two made your way to them, destroying the circle of Walkers that surrounded them, and made an escape route. “Y/N, you are alive!”Madison said, clinging to you in a hug.

“Come on, I’ll get you out of here, I know where we have to go.”

“She has a group!”, Alicia said.

“We have to get Nick.”

Only then did you think of him. You had noticed his absence from the boat and had not dared to shout his name. A warm relief filled your head, but that didn’t mean anything…

“I’ll look for him.”, Travis said. “Madison and Alicia, you go with Y/N, we’ll catch up with you.”

You approached Travis. “You’ll see the boat offshore, they’re waiting for us… Travis, where are Victor and Chris?”

The man just nodded, looked at the floor and wanted to leave, but you stopped him by grabbing him by the arm. Rugged as you really wanted and looked into Travis’s eyes. You understood it immediately… “Please come back…”

He looked at you and nodded, a promise in his eyes, shortly thereafter he went back into the dense vegetation. You swallowed and were abruptly brought back to reality. A Walker appeared out of nowhere and attacked you from behind. You tried to break free, but stumbled over a branch. A moment later, the Walker fell on you, but behind you Alicia had already loaded the weapon and aimed at the living dead. “Are you crazy, you could kill me!”

“Don’t worry, I’ve improved a lot.”, she said harshly and managed to eliminate the Walker. She looked at her mother, who was sitting on a rock, examining a long cut on her calf. “Let’s go, if we’re on the boat, the sooner we can cleanse the wound.”

With the help of Alicia and Y/N, Madison reached the boat without much effort, even though her wound had no signs of infection. When she saw the boat a few hundred yards away, you couldn’t help but smile. They were all at the edge of the lake now, the rope had been lowered and Rick called for Daryl, Carol and Glenn. Soon it was clear why… Several Walkers approached to their left, but they died one after another under the precise aim of the members of Rick’s group.

“Come on Mum. You can do it.”

“Yes. Don’t worry.” She dropped into the water and started swimming as fast as she could to the rope, the wound burning unbearably, Madison could almost see the salt touch the living flesh and sparkle like hydrogen peroxide, she was grimacing at the pain but it didn’t stop, deep, dark circles on her eyes

When they were finally in the immediate vicinity of the boat, you and Alicia helped her hold onto the rope while Rick and Maggie reached out to catch it. In the same way they greeted Alicia and pulled you up with the rope. “Carl, get some bandages, several. Disinfectants, rags, everything we need.” You approached Madison and Alicia. The latter had taken the moist bandage, which now gently wrapped her mother’s wounds and tried to dry it as much as possible. When Carl opened the first aid kit, they started to treat her quickly. Maggie then brought food and handed it to the women.

“Here, you have to eat something.”

“Thanks…” Madison looked exhausted. The only thing she had energy for was a grimace at the pain. She was so weak that she even stopped with her questioning expression, which she had reserved exclusively and in front of all strangers. “Are all of you here? It would be better to drive soon.”, Rick said.

“No, we are still waiting for my husband and my son!”

The former sheriff snorted and glanced at the island. “How long will it take?”, he asked. Rick looked at the woman on the bridge for a moment, and it seemed to him that a too familiar picture was going through his head. He understood what people felt when they saw him. Not just simple, normal fear. A kind of respectful fear and suffering, mixed with the horror of standing before the unknown of the future. It was what they felt when they saw someone who was willing to do anything to live and to let his family survive. And suddenly Rick turned around and walked away…

You snorted and, to reduce the time, took a few rags and began cleaning the boards of the bridge where some blood had been shed. As soon as they finished the medication Madison had fainted on the deck of the ship. She had a little fever and was pale, but at least they had all managed to stop the bleeding, hoping that antibiotics and pain killers would soon improve. The group looked at them hesitantly, they didn’t know what to do. A few minutes had passed and Rick suddenly mumbled to Carol that it might be better to leave. Maybe they were not waiting for anyone anymore, maybe they were already dead, and besides, some Walkers swam closer and closer to the boat. Carol nodded and gestured to the others to prepare the ship. Daryl, his arms crossed over his chest, nodded his head, but you ignored him. The man who wanted to get close to you had to tell you that they couldn’t stay there, they had to go… The group around Rick Grimes didn’t know if there were survivors on the island, but a scream shook the tense silence. “Hey, we’re here!”

Glenn and Daryl hurried to the parapet and leaned forward to look into the water. Glenn reacted first. He threw down the rope again and reached out to help the survivor. Daryl didn’t want to think about this whole situation. Y/N little group had come back like a thunderstorm on a day when the sun was shining. He hated himself because of the fear he felt of not being enough, the fear of being just a substitute. Part of him said it wasn’t like that. This Nick, if he was still alive, was a friend… He understood their relationship, even if he had never seen it. It was rare that he already had friends, let alone female friends, with whom he sometimes had sex. A friend was Carol, but he didn’t go to bed with her. It was a pure friendship, it was different… He realized that he had a more mature friendship. But what if this boy came back while things changed between him and Y/N? You stood on the deck as though paralyzed, your hair still wet with water and your clothes drenched. You had goose bumps and the shirt was completely attached to your body. Daryl didn’t even notice it, he just looked at yout face. Your eyes, your movements, the spasmodic way you bent over to face Glenn. He imagined how much you were waiting for Nick and at the same time Daryl felt protected by this ignorance. Not knowing if death influenced the person he loved… The first person to come aboard was a black-haired, slightly dark-skinned man. He coughed and sat down on the floor to take long breaths. As soon as he recovered, he began to look around to examine all faces. “Where is Madison, And Alicia?”

“She’s in there, she’s resting, she’s lost blood.”,Carol said, nodding toward the bar area. You had not yet satisfied your thirst for knowledge, but at the other end of the rope someone climbed. Glenn reached out to grab him. Carol stepped aside and looked anxiously at Daryl. The man was still studying Y/N’s features and the curiosity of seeing who would turn up on the bridge killed him.

A boy slipped to the ground. He wore a tank top, the same old and drenched as his jeans. He coughed, stumbled a little, clung to the railing and brushed his wet hair from his face. He had dark circles under his eyes and seemed lost in his own world. You covered your mouth with both hands. Slowly he got up. Only a few meters away from you. You waited for Nick’s eyes to look around and identify you. A few seconds passed before he finally saw you. He opened his mouth as if to say something, saw you smile and ran to you. In two long strides he reached you and embraced you tightly. Nick held you close and swung you around for joy. His eyes were puzzled in surprise that his mouth slowly contracted into a smile. With one hand he stroked your wet hair and seemed so surprised that he couldn’t react in any other way. You walked away and both Nick and Daryl could see that you were walking around with a beaming smile of hope. Daryl, however, couldn’t enjoy himself.

“Hey, don’t leave, or should I go again?”, Nick said sarcastically and you gave him a friendly push. “You are such a jerk!” You came back to hug him again and already had your arms outstretched, but Nick put your hands on his chest, approached suddenly and kissed you, stroking your neck and smiled against your lips. “It’s okay. I’m here Y/N.”

Daryl saw this, turned around and disappeared…

Travis leaned over the parapet to watch the waves that formed the tip of the ship. Then he turned to the crew and counted with his fingertips. He went into the commander’s cabin, where he had seen Rick and Y/N shortly before. He realized too late that you were arguing. “Sorry!” The former Sheriff looked at you and tried to understand your state of mind, which wasn’t easy. Often he couldn’t even understand Michonne… “I hope I don’t bother.”

You smiled. “Don’t worry, come in.” Travis quietly closed the door behind him.

“Why don’t you turn on the engines?”

Rick glanced at you as if he was blaming you, then turned to the man. “We save fuel. We are carried by the current, so far it has worked well.”

“Well, I realize what you think of my family, Rick Grimes, but now things have changed, we’re more, the weight has increased, and this boat is for sailing, not for transport a rather aerodynamic shape, it doesn’t resist the water and prevents it from being pushed by the current.”

“We’re not in a hurry.”, Rick replied.

Travis nodded. “Yes, but from experience I can say that life at sea is safer than life in the countryside, we risked more on foot than by boat, so we wanted to get back as soon as possible…” Rick put his hands on his hips. “And what are you suggesting?”, he asked, slightly annoyed.

“Well, I think it’s better to find a bigger boat or another vessel like this so we can travel faster and more comfortably, split into two boats.” You thought about the situation. Rick’s group and Travis’ family, each in a different boat, and you in the middle. A decision you were not ready for or rather one you did not want.

“I think it’s better to find a bigger ship, so we don’t have to split up.”

Rick was the only one who didn’t seem convinced. He also saw that the onslaught on the ocean had slowed down as they had dragged four more people aboard, and he also saw that the privacy of each of them had diminished. Maybe it would have been good to have a bigger boat available, but he didn’t want to be so inferior to the new one. He has set the rules. “We’ll put it to the vote.”, Rick decided. Travis nodded. In Rick’s eyes, he looked confused, as if he was always sad about something. “Alright, Y/N, if you need something…”

“Thanks, Travis.”, you said with a smile.

He embraced you uncertainly and left the cabin, giving Rick one last look. He did not know if he could trust this man. Sometimes he seemed dangerous, he looked like he was ready to do anything for his group. The idea of leaving Y/N alone with him at a time when Rick Grimes didn’t seem particularly relaxed made him nervous. By now Y/N had become like a daughter to him. She has grown older before his eyes, from a teenager to an adult in this crazy world. But they were good people, he knew that it cost them a bit of effort to become who they are. You sighed and turned to look at the river that was coming towards you. Rick flanked you.

“You didn’t tell him.”, you said. “There is no reason, it would only serve to put the two groups against each other.”

“So let’s just talk about our affairs in this group.”

“Yes.” You turned around and looked at him. “I don’t argue about having hesitated to bring them on board, we all did, I understand, we are not like the old days when there were still people you could trust, but Travis and Nick were still out there, Madison had told you, we couldn’t just walk away like that!”

“We didn’t go.”

“But you wanted to do it!”, you snorted and started to go around. “I want you to accept it and understand Rick, now we’re a bigger group! I’m just waiting for you to explain to yourself and the others how to act now. It’s not just your family anymore, now it’s part of mine too.”

“Nobody here knows if your group isn’t dangerous, beware, it’s always good, and you know you’re like a good friend to me by now…”

“You knew that other people come to us and even if they are strangers, they belong to the group of people you just saved and they were part of my group!”

You, whose cheeks had turned pale pink, took a deep breath and tried to ignore the fond words of the former sheriff, although they touched you very much…

“I only expect that we agree, that’s all. Otherwise I will go.” You stepped out of the cabin and took a deep breath. Your loud voice kept anyone who had heard it until you arrived on the other side of the boat, leaning against the parapet.

Survival is essential… Alicia knew enough about you to understand when it was time to switch off and leave you alone, but this time she felt different.

“Are you alright?”, she asked, sitting down to your side.You sighed. “I don’t know.”, you said, rubbing your forehead with one hand.

“Did Travis tell you his idea? He talked to me about it yesterday.”

“Yes, he told us.”

“So you talked to Rick?”

You gave her a guilty look. Unlike Travis and Madison, Alicia and Nick understood you in a jiffy. Maybe because you were all about the same age. You were in a phase of great change for all humanity to face only more changes. It all seemed less bad than it actually was, you felt less alone when you had joined the patchwork family back then.

“I hope it’s not our fault…”, Alicia continued.

“I think I just have extremely stupid hopes…”

“It’s this world, it lets us do things that we should be ashamed of.”

“I know…” For a moment your gaze was lost in the water of the river. “I like it here, I like these people.”, Alicia said, cheering you up. “And I think we have to settle for the whole situation.”

“Hey, is everything okay?” The two of you turned around to the voice that had surprised you. Glenn approached with two fishing poles in his hand. He put one in Alicia’s hand and began putting the bait in the hook. “I thought we made a better impression.” Alicia weighed the staff for a moment and watched him critically. By now, like everyone on board, she was a fishing expert. The difference was that she really liked to fish. It was a moment of relaxation where she could only be for herself. The silence, the wait, the light pull as the prey grabbed the bait. But a cruel practice from the fish’s point of view. People attract fish with the promise of food and then turn it into food themselves. But there was something in the repetition of the gestures, the serenity of what she did, which calmed Alicia. She glanced at Glenn, who had thrown the hook into the sea and looked around. “Where did you learn to fish?”

“None of us knew how to fish, Y/N taught us.”,Glenn replied, pointing to you with a nod.

“If she wasn’t, we would still be looking for food, I never thought about putting the smaller fish aside to use as bait, and you, did you know how to fish?”

“More or less, my grandfather got us fishing when my brother and I were young, a long time ago, and thanks to Victor, I refined the technique.”

“Victor?”

“He was traveling with us.” Alicia pressed her lips together and didn’t add anything, so Glenn didn’t say anything else either. “Previously, the only fish I fish was the plastic fish from some festivals.”

The girl smiled slightly at him. “Yes, I understand you, or if you won something, but it was never enough for what you really wanted, then you got the worst stuff.”

“Yes… But there was Cotton candy.”

“And caramelized apples.”

You noticed that you were no longer actively engaged in the conversation. Obviously, the two got along. But you had doubts about Madison what she thinks over the group of Rick Grimes. You loved Madison like a mother, but you also knew she had a strong character. Just like Carol and Michonne.

“We have to make a decision.”, Rick said as you all gathered around the bar’s round counter. “As Travis has shown me, as you’ve probably already seen, the boat has become much slower. There are two solutions: a larger ship, or a second boat.”Daryl’s stomach contracted. He imagined the scene already, Y/N found a boat and started walking with her group, isolated from the others. Far from him. Together with Nick.

“We should take a more spacious ship.” Carl looked at everyone, ignoring his father. “When a group arrives, we could pretend we’re not there, switch it off and leave it behind, we’ve already done it and it works, some of us can walk on the bridge and pretend it’s deserted. But two moving boats, one right behind the other, would attract the attention, a drifting boat is fine, but two are too great a coincidence.”

“I agree with Carl.”, Travis said. A fleeting smile appeared on his face. He almost immediately sympathized with the boy. They spent a lot of time discussing the books you had taken for him. It was great for Carl to have a real teacher and it was good for Travis to have a student like in the old days. “That would be the best idea.”

“In that case, it would be better to get out and walk on foot.”, Rick said annoyed. “We’ll be faster and better at exploring the area, finding boats, supplies, tools, clothes, all sorts of things we need.”

“But-… ”, Madison said, standing up. “We will be more in danger if we continue on land. Why not continue along the river? We’ll just keep moving if we find a suitable boat at some point.”

“We can not stop every time to check if a boat is available, it would be a waste of time.” Everyone turned to Daryl. It seemed like weeks to you that you had heard his voice last time. You searched for his gaze, but the man deliberately avoided it. He kept an eye on Madison, watching Rick from time to time, but flew his eyes over you and Nick as if the space you were occupying was empty. As if you were invisible and intangible.

“We have to get away from the river to find these things…” You sensed that the argument was taking a long time and intervened: “Daryl is right, Madison, we can not think of finding another boat as long as this one continues here, we need to get out.”

“You saw what happened the last time we went down!”, she said, glaring at you. Strict and distant. There was something resembling a grudge, as if she were accusing you of going to the dark side. “Yeah, but now we’re more people - Rick’s group-…”You glanced at everyone. “…- They’ve been out in the country for years, they know how to defend themselves.”

“You can not defend yourself against anything.”

“Oh, trust me, you can.”, Carol said, her arms crossed, looking thoughtfully at the floor. You turned your eyes to Daryl as if seeking help and for a fraction of a second your eyes met. It was as if he understood, as if he had accepted your request. The man sighed. He wanted to reassure Madison, he wanted to convince her that this was the smartest decision, though not necessarily the safest solution. Above all, he wanted to get you out of the mess, he wanted to help you, to allow your group to integrate. He opened his mouth, but at that moment Nick took a step forward and joined his mother and you. “We need another boat, Travis himself says it, and the only way to find her is to go down and look for one.” The boy sought Alicia’s gaze before Madison wanted to continue and then continued talking. “True, we took risks at other times, but now it’s different, we’re more, there are people who travel outdoors for years, and we should also learn how to do it, just in case.” Nick leaned over his mother and mumbled something. As he moved away from her, he stood near you and exchanged a knowing look with you. Daryl bit his lip annoyed. The quiet way in which you two communicated with each other made him cook inwardly. A communication of looks, funny jokes, giggles. And the unbearable way you touched each other and walked carelessly aside, as if you were used to doing it all the time. As if you felt safe when you were together. A kind of communication that was forged in years of living together. The thought alone irritated Daryl, making him pale with envy. It was not a dissimilar relationship to what he had with Carol when he thought about it. The only difference was that between him and Carol was not the thread of tension between Nick and you. It passed between you, but Daryl could see it clearly, or maybe he wanted to see it… A thread of physical tension… The man shook himself as Rick clapped his hands. “Michonne, Glenn, Carol, Daryl, we are preparing everything for the trip.”, said the former Sheriff, followed closely by Carl. “Dad, how many books can I bring?”

“Just one, when you’re done, we’ll find more, I promise you.”

“But Dad…”

The group dispersed and you stayed in the middle. On one side Rick, on the other Madison. You watched Daryl getting ready to go. “Daryl, wait!” You reached him in a few steps and it seemed the man was reluctant to stop.

Daryl didn’t look you in the eye, instead glancing at the walls of the bar to deal with Nick. He couldn’t resist, though he had tried everything not to look at him. He saw the eyes of the young man talking to his sister but occasionally looking at you as if watching you. Daryl hated the way he looked at you as if he were a dangerous person nearby, as if he might suddenly go crazy and do something to you. He thought for a moment about how this scene appeared in Nick’s eyes… Of all this, you didn’t notice. “I wanted to apologize, I didn’t know-..”

“You don’t have to say anything anymore! Shut the fuck up!” With these words, Daryl turned around and this time left more determined and made no sign to stop again in your vicinity.


	10. Chapter 10

The bright light fell through the leaves in thin beams and blinded the group, which moved in peace in the clearing. Morality was not the best, so the desire to have a conversation was definitely at historic lows. You were on the way and also found some boats but these were unfortunately far from suitable. Many were small, similar to what you had just left, but unfortunately without a kitchen or the possibility of each having a bed. You traveled on, with great discouragement from Madison, from town to town, moving mostly on foot. The best thing would be to find a car that could transport you all, but you hadn’t been lucky until then. Rick, Michonne and Alicia were looking for firewood. Together with Madison, Maggie took care of Judith. Glenn and Carol prepared a clearing that was free of leaves and branches so you could sleep, while you took care of the hearth and Daryl and Travis returned with the loot. Part of you were glad not to eat more fish…

“Hey, who is this beautiful girl?”

A voice made you turn and paint a smile on your face.

“You’re pretty, so let me tell you.” Nick glanced at Judith, who turned to him. He picked her up and began to look around the clearing. “Do you know what I’d like to have now? A Coke. Maybe one day, when you’re old enough to drink one, we’ll still find some of them wrapped up.” He paused to think about it. “One day, I’ll tell you what a school is, but you know what, you didn’t miss so much, but you would have been a princess there.” Finally, a word she could understand in all this conversation. “Princess!”, Judith agreed and nodded. Her father always said it, and so did the others. So it had to be true, she was a princess. It wasn’t clear to her what exactly a princess was or what she did, but she had seen faded pictures and drawings in the time they were in the kindergarten. It didn’t seem to be bad. They wore beautiful clothes and smiled the whole time. “Princess.”, Judith repeated. You, who had come from the other side of the clearing to find a stick to accelerate the fire, smiled at the sight. You hadn’t often met children during the travels, but each time they clung like a gum to Nick’s shoe sole. He knew how to deal with the children, how to make them feel good, busy and not bored, and what to do when they cried or had a temper tantrum. He not only knew how to do it, he was happy to be with them. You folded your arms across your chest and leaned your back against a tree, your eyes following Nick, who showed Judith the trees and told what once was a forest at a place called Middle-earth where the trees could run and talk. You shook your head, giggling. At that moment, a shadow came past you, you had only a short time to look up to see Daryl passing and he threw to Nick a murderous gaze and a look of guilt on your back. You sighed and went back to the fire. Daryl was sitting on the ground and began to skin the prey more than it was necessary. In those two weeks his anger had increased day by day. Half awaken, before falling asleep, all the time. He would rather be angry with himself, this boy wasn’t to blame. No more blame than to be young, disgustingly charming, at least he imagined it as you saw him, good at defending himself and who knows how many other stupid qualities. Judith also worshiped him and followed him like a shadow. Daryl gave him one last look and then threw the rabbit’s skin into a corner to feed the insects… “I’ll prepare it.” You came with a pot to Daryl, which already contained a pre-heated prey, tomatoes, some crumbled spice, and nuts you’d found in a house a few days ago. “There’s going to be a gourmet dinner tonight. If that’s what we can call it.”, you said smilingly, sitting next to Daryl and cutting the rabbit to pieces, the man uttering something that sounded and snorted like a grunt, so you sighed and as Daryl began to stand up, you stopped him by holding him by the arm. “Wait, we have to talk…”

“What?” Daryl hated that sentence. He was someone who preferred to do things instead of saying them, but he wasn’t afraid to face a speech that needed to be addressed. The Apocalypse forces you to confront people. It has to be done because sometimes there is no second chance. He moistened his lips, shifted his weight from one foot to the other and sat down again. You waited a moment before you started to speak.

“I mean it the way I say it… I’m sorry, I’m sorry about what happened with Nick when they all came back in. I couldn’t imagine him doing it.” You looked at the man’s expression. “But I wanted you to know.” Daryl played with the tip of his shoe and tore at a piece of rubber from the sole of the foot, which peeled off. He snorted, looked up and began to massacre the ground with a knife without turning to you. “I can see how you’re looking at him.”

“What are you talking about?”, you mumbled, shaking your head in confusion. Of all that Daryl could tell you, that was really the last thing. It seemed clear to you that it had been a worthless kiss. “Daryl, I -…”

“Don’t say that fucking’ nonsense!”, he snapped and finally turned to you. His eyes were cold, his expression angry. “If it bothered you, you would have withdrawn, and it was damn obvious that you liked it.”

You looked at him in surprise. “Daryl, what did you expect? A slap in the face? Until recently, I didn’t even know he was alive, I didn’t even have time to react.”

“You should ask yourself why.”

“And you should be a little less of a fucking asshole!”, you squinted and bit your tongue. “I know I’m not in the right position to get angry, but please, could you make things a little easier? You’re angry, I understand it, I would be too… But-…”, you stopped, rubbing your tongue over her lips, a fleeting gesture Daryl noticed, “…-I’m a little confused, Nick, he… I had no idea he was alive, you understand? All the time I pretended that he wasn’t there, as if he was dead. But it’s not that, that’s the reality and now… Now things have changed and I don’t know what to do…”

Daryl nodded, ran two fingers over his lips and looked at the camp. “I’ll talk to Nick, I’ll tell him… I’ll tell him everything.”, you added. You shook your head as if you wanted to shake off what you’d just said. You didn’t look at Daryl and neither did Nick. You just stared at a spot on the ground, not far from your own feet. Daryl said nothing, instead he rested his head on his own shoulder. His eyes couldn’t help but fall on the boy. He’d left Judith with Michonne and walked around Glenn and Carol, helping them to build temporary makeshift tents. He wore the same top Daryl had seen the first day. His hair was messy on his head and lay as if he had applied gel. He had a serious expression, almost annoyed, constantly on his face. The only time he had seen him differently was with his sister Alicia, Judith, and Y/N. They were the only people he smiled with.

“Then you will tell him everything?”

“Yes.”

“So I could do it too.” Daryl turned and looked at you. “I could kiss you, here, now, in front of all.”

You wavered. You didn’t know what to say. You didn’t know what to say, or rather what you wanted. Daryl was one of the greatest people you had ever met in your life. You were thinking about the scenario if Daryl really did. He leaned in and your lips met halfway… There was something reassuring about this scene, something you longed for. Not only physical contact, but above all the knowledge. To know that you are with him. Then you thought about how the others would take it and immediately the picture of Nick appeared in your head. You imagined him seeing you. His soul would leave his body to gasp, and his reaction was always to make the most hasty decisions… You admitted to yourself that you never wanted to bother him. Nobody would like to worry about a friend. Was he your boyfriend? Or just a good friend? Or was there something more hidden behind it? You yourself couldn’t answer. You grinned with a nervous, false smile. “You would never do it in front of everyone here, you’re not like that.”

“You think so?” Daryl came suddenly closer, a few inches from your face. You could feel his breath on your cheeks, looked him straight in the eye and see all the intense structures of his iris. Instinctively as for a real reason, you moved easily and surprisingly in his direction. Daryl made a bitter grimace, half laughing. He brought his mouth close to your ear.

“You wouldn’t hesitate if you were sure what you wanted, and if you’re not sure, I don’t fucking know why I should damn well wait.”

You were speechless. Confused of his proximity and moved by the situation, you had no idea how to react. Only after a few moments did you understand what he meant to say. Daryl Dixon was no substitute for anyone and no second choice, he wouldn’t accept it. You knew in your heart that it was a just cause, he didn’t deserve it, but his words made you suffer and put you on the defensive. “I’m sorry, Daryl.”, you answered coldly. “I’m selfish, but I can not afford to make a wrong decision, I’ve been wrong many times in my life, but this isn’t just about me, I have to be sure what I want, I wish I couldn’t hurt anyone, but that’s not how things work.”

Daryl wanted to scream at you, then hug you and kiss you. It seemed to him that his stomach had contracted, causing only nausea. He wanted to be the first choice, he wanted Y/N to have no doubt who you should love, he wanted you to come to him. But how could he claim to compete with Nick? Their relationship had been going on for years, but he and Y/N had just known each other for a few months.

“Hey.”

A sharp tone above you made him look up. Nick was standing above of you and frowning at you. He studied your face, tried to read something in it and then went to Daryl. He put his hand on your shoulder, possessive, while his mouth touched your cheek. An intimacy that disgusted Daryl. He jumped up and crossed the clearing with long strides. He disappeared into the thicket of the forest and only Carl realized he was leaving. He looked at him, looked at you and then back to where Daryl had disappeared. It was obvious how it would end, at least for Carl, after what he had thought of you two before. He almost made a bet with Glenn.

“Are you alright?”

You forced a smile, wiped your hair from your face and tried to look happy. “What? Yes! Everything’s alright.” You began to cut the rabbit and put it in the pot. Nick turned to look for Daryl but didn’t see him. “Does he bother you?”

“What? Daryl? No.” You stood up, put the pot on the fire and fastened it to a hook that held it over the flames. You thought of the conversation you and Daryl had had in the bank office a long time ago and sighed. Maybe a grilled steak would have solved all the problems. You returned to the place where you sat and began wiping your hands with water.

Nick sat down next to you, put an arm on your back, and tapped the other shoulder with his forefinger. You turned around, but there was no one, and just as you noticed, you smiled and looked back at Nick. He just smiled, amused, but more than anything relieved by such a familiar situation.

“I can still fool you with such things?”, Nick asked, laughing.

“You know you can fool me with that!”

You wiped your hands on your shirt and watched the camp. “What did you do when we split up?”The boy shrugged. “We survived…” Nick followed your gaze and took a moment to watch you. He noticed that you were looking at the trees and looking for something, for a particular person. Your eyes were bleak, guilty and regretful. Luckily, he knew how to distract Y/N. “Then why don’t you tell me about you, how did you do it on your own?”

When you wanted to say something, your eyes seemed to shine. “I wasn’t alone, I met Rick and the others shortly after, I got a cold, remember?”He nodded in response. “After a few days I had a fever, I came over a stream and filled some water bottles, then I went back into the forest and I decided that I would be safe on a tree and have a rest…”

“Still this tree story, we are not monkeys.”

You smiled. “But it’s actually an excellent idea.”

“Would you like to tell me that it worked?”

“If I hadn’t been sick, it would have worked!”, you said. “I was moving at the wrong time and Rick and his group spotted me. Daryl is practically a bloodhound. He could find your tracks in the middle of the ocean and well, he noticed me and I tried to move, at least they told me I was a victim of fever and I literally fell against him, when I woke up, Rick offered to find a safe place because I knew the area better, so they gave me food and protection until I was feeling well again.”

“Happy ending!”, Nick said.

“More or less…” You looked up at him. “I found Ofelia, she was a Walker…”, you added softly. The boy looked away. He stretched out again and put his arm around your shoulders, this time to squeeze you. He said nothing, that was not necessary. “We were… I was close, I saw her… And I had to kill her…”, you continued in a broken voice, “…Then I found the camp, it was all burned.”

When you looked up again, your eyes were shiny with tears, but not one of your eyelashes. Like a shiny veil. You wouldn’t cry for bad memories, memories that hurt you. “I thought you were dead…”, you whispered, looking at Nick. “I thought I would never see you again…”

You reached out and embraced him tightly. You would have liked to banish those feelings from your heart, those pictures from your head, all that frightened you. “It didn’t happen, we’re here.” You broke away from him and smiled. “Wait a minute.”You got up and rummaged around in your backpack before you found what you were looking for, returning to Nick with a triumphant look on your face. The boy smiled as he took his beige jacket. “You found her, I didn’t even think she was spared from the fire!”

“Sure. This jacket will bury us all!”, you replied with a laugh. “Thank you Y/N…” Nick put the garment on his knees and took a quick look at the camp. “We were lucky, you found a nice group.”

“They are good people.” You followed his gaze and hugged the whole group with your eyes. Michonne and Alicia played with Judith, Travis and Glenn finally attended the dinner, Carl and Madison looked at a map and tried to figure out what the next plan would be. It was nice to see them working together. You were glad that the two groups had grown together so well by now. “Daryl too?”

You turned to Nick and looked at him with wide eyes. “What?” The boy didn’t speak, he looked at you closely. You knew what that look meant, you had seen that look at other times. He didn’t trust him. He didn’t like Daryl at all.

“Of course, Daryl is… he’s okay, I mean, I owe him my life.”

“I think I know that kind of guy…”, Nick finally said. “And if I know him, he can not be a good company.”

You snorted. “You are not able to criticize him, not even you were a good company before all this, or am I wrong?”

Nick looked at you angrily. “I just mean that he’s not the person I entrust to difficult tasks, he doesn’t look like one of the good guys.”

“He’s a very smart man instead, more than it seems and more than he knows himself.”, you said firmly, annoyed by the boy’s criticism. “At first glance, he isn’t very trustworthy, I admit, but wait and you will see it… Daryl isn’t like the others, for him, it has always been the Apocalypse. He takes things the way they come. He’s used to that kind of life.”

“Do you like it?”

You shrugged. “I just think he’s adapted better than all of us, relaxing with him is a social interaction, but otherwise he’s fantastic… I mean, it’s soothing with him, he cares about us.”

“Even as I take care of you and worry?”, Nick asked with questioning, irritated eyes. “You know, you have some things in common.” You hesitated. For a moment you wondered if this was the time to talk to Nick about Daryl or whatever was between you. You could solve the problem and finish. But the truth was that you hadn’t decided yet. Getting Nick back was wonderful. But you couldn’t ignore Daryl, you couldn’t put him in a corner, as if nothing had happened. A tiny part of you had thought about it. Nick was back, everything would be great! But that wasn’t the truth. The truth was that when Daryl was around, your eyes fell on him, on his arms, on his broad shoulders, on his impenetrable face… And you thought it was beautiful. You already had some experience behind you to know that the hardest moments were those involving feelings. Love, every kind of love, for the partner, for the parents, for the friends. It was complex and sometimes difficult to handle, if only to understand.

“Food is ready!” Carol looked up at everyone and began to distribute the meat.

“A gourmet meal!”, Nick commented when he saw the food and you snapped at the rabbits with some rage, still looking at the spot where Daryl had disappeared.


	11. Chapter 11

You preceded everyone and were in a bad mood. Maggie had tried to talk to you, but you had only answered with a grunt. Encouraged by Madison, who knew you well enough, Maggie thought you understood it wasn’t the time to talk. You sensed that the group behind you looked at you as if you were a wild animal, a creature willing to kill them when they least expected it, with little dignity and even less honesty. That was the common thought and, above all, the thought of Daryl. You imagined how he looked at you suspiciously or worse, disgusted. For a moment, you were discouraged, things happened way too fast. You thought he was hurt, but it wasn’t even his fault if Nick had come back so suddenly from the world of the living dead. Still, you couldn’t just push Nick away, telling him you’d replaced him with a livelier model while he wasn’t there, leaving ignorant. On the other hand, you had no real relationship with Nick, you were more than just normal friends. You could not explain yourself your feelings… Nick had missed you and you had missed him, but you couldn’t ignore it, the feelings you felt for Daryl, something beyond friendship and a physical relationship.

“Y/N…”, Madison’s voice was heard behind you.

The idea of leaving Nick was terrible. Not so much as you would feel, but what could happen to him. The truth was that Nick was a person who was too sensitive, drifting with events like the flood without fighting them, and often this flood took him to insecure places. He risked drowning every time and you didn’t want to be responsible.

“Y/N!”

On the other hand, you couldn’t treat Daryl so unfairly. He did not deserve it, you just didn’t want him to suffer. On the contrary, you wanted to be supportive, to stay with him, even in the biblical as well as platonic sense, you admitted. You couldn’t ignore the knot in your throat as you remembered how you slowly moved away from his life. He didn’t talk to you anymore, almost didn’t look at you. It was unbearable…

“Damn! Y/N!”

“What!” You turned around. Madison watched the body shatter beyond recognition beyond her feet. You followed her eyes, gave Maggie an angry look, and brushed your hair away from your sweaty forehead. “Yes…”, you cleared her throat, “I’m coming.” Madison watched you walk past them without saying another word. “It’s still a mile away, judging by the map, at least.”, you said after a few minutes. You all went to a small shopping center and hoped to find more food, things for Judith, as well as some medicines and antibiotics. A few days earlier, Madison had seen a billboard pointing to a mall a few miles away. It was a long way from your itinerary, so you all had suggested stopping for one day and driving there to raid supplies. Maggie had offered to go with you and so did Carl. Daryl had thought for a moment and decided not to leave, spending more than a full day with you and Nick in the immediate vicinity. He couldn’t stand the sight of you two together. Not even a second after Daryl had confirmed that he would go with them, you had come to them: “I’m coming too.”

Daryl had turned to face you with a murderous look.

“No, you should-…”

“I don’t care what you say.” you responded determinedly, ignoring his eyes. And now you are here. A happy company that embarked on a shopping day. It would have been nicer if the main entrance hadn’t been circled by the living dead. “Let’s go in from the parking garage.”, Daryl said after lowering the binoculars. “What if the Walkers are there too, we’d have trouble seeing them in time.”, Madison said.

“The parking garages of these places are hard to reach, sometimes there are gates, the entrances are closed, we can cross them, they can not, and then there will not be many.” You all headed for the first available ramp. As Daryl said, the parking lot was almost deserted. There were not more than a few scattered Walkers near a railing that blocked the entrance to the parking lot. You killed them without difficulty, then began to use a pair of pliers to cut the metal wires of the grid. You were in less than fifteen minutes, avoiding a few small groups of undead. You were not the first to choose this place as an offer or as a base, which was clearly visible. It was as if a dark cloud had passed over the area of hygiene products and pharmacies, but left the children’s ward intact. There were only a few Walkers who went for a walk here and there, but luckily the place was quite deserted and so large that you heard it coming far away. Your towed footsteps echoed against the high ceilings. Carl stopped in the vicinity with some books in his hands. They were untouched. No one had ever moved one of them. You were happy about how the boy liked to read. Occasionally he would ask for explanations about this or that band, about a writer or a historical epoch, but his new mentor had definitely become Travis. You had sometimes studied ancient cultures, but had to attend the literature class and take an exam. You liked remembering those hours and talking to Carl about it, as if he had also remembered someone else’s life. But with Travis it was a different story. A true teacher, as well as one who loved his job. You were glad that Carl had found a refuge and someone to talk to. He needed something to remember that only survival isn’t always the most important thing.

“What are you recommending?”, the boy asked, putting his hand on the edges of the books. You studied the titles and eventually took out one of the books. “How about this?”

He bit his lip and took it in his hands. “I don’t know…”

“It may sound hard, but it’s the same with all the classics, we read them, we’ll never understand them to the end, but in the end, they leave something behind.” You smiled encouragingly at him.

“I spoke to Daryl the other day, saying it’s the most useless book he thinks exists.”

The smile suddenly disappeared from your face. “Well then… I suppose that’s because it’s the only book he’s ever read, if we can put it that way.”, you snapped, tearing the book out of Carl’s hand and throwing it into a pile of some other books. You tried to calm down. You hadn’t come to argue with everyone or to prove that you were annoyed.“And what would you like to read?”

Carl went to a shelf along. “I think the classic would be a good choice…”, he said and smiled at you. “Maybe something interesting, adventurous, something like that.”

“Okay, maybe not too repetitive…” You started looking through the shelves, “…How about this?”

“I’ve heard about it, but never read it.”

“And are you interested? It has an interesting plot, I can swear it. A completely unpopular context, but some hangouts. A crime committed by someone blamed for somebody else, for example.”

“But isn’t that from the reader’s point of view?”,Carl asked, frowning and turning the book to read the story on the back.

“Yes, but that doesn’t change the story, just how it’s told.”

In the end you convinced him. Carl put the book in his backpack and continued the exploration. Maggie filled her bag with rompers, bibs, towels, and milk powder. Not far from her, in a pharmacy, Madison rummaged for the last remaining antibiotics. She tried to open a few drawers behind the pharmacy table.

Daryl looked around. At the end of the corridor, a few Walkers trudged in your direction, but they were no real danger. “I’ll look for the warehouses, maybe we’ll find something to eat there.”, he warned the rest of the group before leaving. Madison nodded in response. Carl and you returned to the group, and when you heard those words, you stopped in the brightly lit corridor by the large windows on the ceiling. “I’m leaving, too.”, you said, starting to follow Daryl.

“Wait.” Carl wanted to follow you, but then changed his mind. Even Madison seemed to understand why. “You can help me with these drawers.”, she suggested to the boy when she saw him arrive. Carl looked in the direction in which Daryl and you had disappeared. “It’s getting better…”, he just said.

“What are you doing here? Go back to the rest of our group.”

“You don’t have to tell me what to do and what not.”

“Then you can at least shut the hell up.”

“Don’t. Tell. Me. What. To. Do.”, you repeated word for word, articulating the sentence as if you were talking to an idiot. Daryl said nothing more. He took a big step and walked to a small door marked 'Private! Only for staff.’ She was locked, so he leaned over the lock and began to break it open, patiently, with the point of the knife he carried with him. A dry sound warned him that he had succeeded.

“Wait.” Before he opened the door, you were kneeling beside him, one hand on the handle. You studied the keyhole and peered inside. “It looks empty.” You knocked on the door and waited a moment. No Walker had been attracted to the noise, so you opened the door.

“It does not look like a warehouse…”

You entered and stood in front of an empty long corridor pointing to the emergency exits.

“If things go wrong, we’ll end up at the manager’s office.” Daryl stepped forward and behind him trotted Y/N, desperately thinking about how to start this conversation without attacking him. The real reason you were there was to talk privately to Daryl. Unfortunately, the rage building up in you didn’t really help you. Part of you wanted to beat him, shake him, ask him what the hell he wanted. He understood that, he must have felt bad, but now he could stop being offended. You wouldn’t have solved the situation that way, and eventually you were too grown-up to have a temper tantrum. Daryl and you entered a large room with a very high ceiling full of huge parcels several feet high. Some were open, others had fallen down and their contents had spread to the floor. Nothing useful, as far as you could see so far. Probably the useful things were higher, the lower ones had already been stolen. A familiar growl made you both aware. One head of a Walker peered up, the rest buried under several rows of pallets. Daryl grimaced. He hated it even more to see these creatures under these conditions. After all, they were once human beings. It wasn’t their fault if they had turned into stupid, hungry and miserable monsters. He killed the Walker by hand with an arrow from his crossbow. He pulled the arrow out of his head and wiped it on his pants and walked a few steps into the room. “These packages could be dangerous, they could fall on us like it happened to him.”, he said pointing to the dead man. You bit your lower lip thoughtfully. “We could create some kind of scale.” The man turned and looked at you perplexed. “We climb and have easy access to the top package.” You first made your way to the back of the warehouse. You found a machine for lifting goods nearby. It was one of those single-seated canary yellow gadgets, with two long iron axles jutting forward and the controls facing the driver…

“I hope you know how to drive one of them.”, Daryl said sourly. You crossed your arms over your chest, annoyed by his tone. “I have no idea.” The man said nothing and sat in the driver’s seat, apparently ignoring you. When chaos broke out, those who worked there hadn’t bothered to leave everything as prescribed by work, and one couldn’t blame them for this decision. Daryl switched on the machine and then began to study the switches and levers. In the end it wasn’t really difficult to operate the truck, even an idiot would have been successful. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that you were standing at a safe distance. Maybe you thought he was an idiot… He made his way and the vehicle began to move slowly. You were reassured by the relative ease with which Daryl had maneuvered the truck, so you approached and climbed into the moving machine, clinging to the iron frame. For a while you watched the man continue silently and then looked away. “It’s useless for you to behave like that, you know?” But Daryl still didn’t say anything.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but you know that you’re not going to make it easy for me.”, you continued.

“Maybe I could pretend that I was dying, so you have to decide.”, he answered suddenly. You rolled your eyes. Your patience was gone with these childish words. “What the hell is wrong with you!”, you shouted, putting a hand on the steering wheel and preventing Daryl from driving on. The man pulled his hands back as if he couldn’t even touch them, sighed annoyed, and stopped the machine. “Just to make it clear, this situation makes me fucking sick!” Finally, Daryl looked at you and waited for you to continue.

“Of course, I can not deny that, I told you that there was something between us and now I have to understand what that is, it’s useless to keep coming back from that! I just feel more confused than before, so please, can you stop behaving like a little asshole? Damn!”

Daryl took these words very carefully, looked at you from below and couldn’t help but think that even when you were angry, you looked beautiful… “Did you talk to him?”

You looked away and played with a thread that looked out of the hem of her top. “I… There was no reason so far.”

The man snorted. “Time is the only thing we have in abundance.” He rose slowly from the seat until he stood near the small machine he towered above. “You didn’t say why you don’t want him to know, now I’ll ask you a simple question and the answer is either yes or no.”

You looked him in the eyes and it was very difficult for Daryl to maintain that dry, authoritative tone. He looked like a scared animal, a prey suddenly in front of the attacker, terrified, baffled, and his heart beating a thousandfold faster than before. He was sure if he had put his hand on his chest, he would have felt how strong and fast his heart was beating. Part of him hated how you made him feel, but he was tired of waiting.

“You want to be with me?” You didn’t answer. Because you didn’t know the answer. You unconsciously bit your lower lip and continued to stare Daryl in the eye. He decided he had to find the answer himself. He leaned over and kissed you. Gentle and slow, a tender kiss. He stayed on your lips, waiting for what you would do, and in the meantime he stroked your cheek with the backs of his fingers. You closed your eyes and only when they were completely closed, you answered his kiss. You clung to his shirt, lost in the taste of his mouth, in the movement of your tongues, in the touch of his hands that slid over your back and pulled you to him. Daryl opened his eyes and didn’t let go, sitting down in the car’s seat and pulling you with him. You sat on top of him and wrapped your arms around his neck. You kept your eyes closed and loved the kisses of the man you fully enjoyed. Daryl’s eyes didn’t leave you for a moment. He looked from your neck to the furrow between your breasts. He stroked your cheeks and you smiled and started kissing him again. Something was wrong with this whole situation… Daryl didn’t understand what the problem was. He only knew that he was uncomfortable and didn’t understand why. His mind was clouded by your smile, your caresses. You had unbuttoned his shirt and kissed the back of his neck and Daryl couldn’t even understand that one plus one was two. He moistened his lips and squeezed your breasts. He watched your reaction, which closed your eyes and sighed. Suddenly you grabbed his hand and pushed him so far away that Daryl thought he had done something wrong. But then you looked at him with a wry look and started fumbling with his belt.

For a moment, a thousandth of a second, Daryl thought to stop you. He wanted to understand what it was and why, but it was there and he couldn’t ignore these feelings. But just before he reached the epiphany, you knelt between his legs and Daryl returned to the cloud where only testosterone ruled. He couldn’t even react when he saw you wiping your lips. You had to stop, he had to tell you to stop. But he kept his arms at his sides like useless appendages. Daryl, vaguely aware that your hair ended in front of your face every time you moved, stretched out his arms and brushed a few strands away from your face. You looked up as if to thank him and watching you from this pose made Daryl nervous. He grimaced and a muffled moan escaped his lips. Daryl put both hands on the shoulders of you and began to push you away, but you pushed his hands aside.

“Y/N…”, the man gasped. “Y/N, it’s enough.” He tried to push you away, but you took his wrists and held him tight. You understood that you were on the right path to bring him to orgasm, so you continued until he came, with his head back and his eyes closed. When you were done, you got up and wiped the corners of your mouth with a quick, gentle gesture. Most of the time, Daryl had looked at you, it seemed vulgar, but you had made him so nervous that he didn’t recognize vulgarity. Or maybe it was just that you were the one who did it, and none of you was uncomfortable, except for Nick… Without thinking too much, Daryl lifted you from the kneeling pose and let you sit in front of him, gently pushing your back so that your back rested on the dashboard. He leaned forward and started kissing you, then reflexively he put his hand in your crotch and began to stroke you. Your face drove him crazy. Your cheeks were flushed and your lips opened slowly. The moment he looked at you, your eyes were closed and you dropped your head slowly with a brief sob. Daryl began to move, first with slow movements, then faster. As his speed increased, his lunges became drier, his movements rougher. You began to moan, and the only thought that made you enjoy it made him startled again.

“Daryl…”, you called, looking into his eyes and bringing his face close to yours. “Please don’t stop…”

At that moment, he understood what was wrong. Of course it was too late to stop, besides he would never do it, it would have been wrong on his part and at least in this area he considered himself a gentleman. He liked to hear you moan, but he couldn’t ignore the uncomfortable feeling he felt. You fell panting on top of him and for a few minutes you both stayed that way. Finally, you leaned back to give him a gentle kiss on the cheek and then Daryl responded. He picked you up rough on the sides and slipped out of the car.

“Let’s go, now.” He wiped his hands on his shirt, and turned away to avoid your gaze. You looked at him impatiently. It took a little longer to get ready, but when you finally came down from the yellow truck and both forgot your mission, you approached Daryl with a steady gaze. “What’s wrong?”, you asked bluntly.

“One moment before everything was alright, I asked you if you wanted to be with me or not, and the next moment you do shit to me like that?”,Daryl replied. He leaned forward, his hands on his hips, careful not to let you pass until he finally got an answer. The man changed his style, the crossbow on his shoulder and his eyes all but rested on you.

“Come on, Daryl, I’m tired, I don’t want to interpret your behavior anymore, and then I should be the one to apologize for that?”

Daryl looked at you and this time he was angry. He stepped closer to you, but did not dare to come too close. “I ain’t one another of your fucking friends, is that clear?”

You were stunned. “But what, what do you mean?”

“Don’t make fun of me, don’t use me like I’m your fucking toy!” He moved as he made that little speech as if he was unable to stand still on his feet. Daryl didn’t stop for a moment to look you in the eye. “I wouldn’t do that to you!”, he said, leaving as he left you more guilty and agonizing than ever.


	12. Chapter 12

The two groups had been on the road again for a few days and had moved more and more away from the river. The real plan was to get to the sea, but a week ago Alicia had found a map of the state and they realized that the river was going north, then bending and coming back to point south and the last kilometers towards the Gulf of Mexico. They had decided to cross this route on foot. The river would have returned to them a few miles away. Daryl moved on quickly, at the head of the big group, the crossbow over his shoulder, the arrows ready to be shot, and the mind completely focused on the journey. It was important to pursue the best, shortest and least complicated way. After the situation in the storeroom, he hadn’t spoken to you anymore than it was absolutely necessary. And even then, a conversation was limited to nodding and monosyllabic phrases. But basically it was said there is nothing more to say and talk about. Certain things had to be demonstrated and nothing more. It was just morning when you stopped to rest for a while. In the last few days Judith had been struggling with sleep, keeping everyone awake for a long time. Some of the group were exhausted, yawning constantly and so tired that they were hungrier than usual. They scattered on the floor, Michonne began sharpening the katana, Carol was busy with her knife, Glenn made a comfy bed with what they had and Carl was busy with his book. Daryl stood in a corner, away from everyone. His eyes discouraged every approach. The man snorted as he saw Nick rummaging in one of the backpacks and taking out two servings of food. Your smile was pale, so tired, but you accepted the cookies Nick handed you.

“Thank you…”

“No problem.”, Nick said, swallowing a biscuit in a mouthful.

“I’d like to eat ice cream again, but I think it’s impossible without a fridge.”

Nick had continued to look at them and when you were done talking about chilled food, he came out with that natural phrase, without compulsion, as if to say something completely different: “I’ll find a bigger tent for the two of us.”

You looked at him with sudden astonishment. “Excuse me?”

He noted your startled tone, your eyes widening with astonishment, and Nick hated the reaction. You pretended you had no idea what he was talking about or what you had experienced together. It had been as if your relationship had come a step back since you had found each other again. Apart from a kiss nothing had happened, neither looks nor caresses. And that was the kiss of two people who really liked each other and are happy to have each other. It wasn’t a sensual kiss, it wasn’t a romantic kiss and it shouldn’t be. At least not for you.

“A tent.”, the boy repeated. “A little privacy.”

You dropped your arms, the cookies in your hands, and Nick realized something was wrong. You weren’t one who reacted that way unless it was really serious. The last time he saw you look like that was when a gun was aimed at the back of your head. You moistened your lips and you couldn’t keep your eyes on Nick. You felt guilty, like a terrible person. It was time to tell him what was going on, but how would he react to this news? How would he take it?

“Well… I don’t need to think about it much.”, he added.

“Nick, I think I have something to tell you.”

And you told everything without hiding anything. You just omitted the most intimate details. You narrated how you and Daryl had approached, how he had been a person who made you feel so good, how he, Daryl Dixon, made you feel… You said he had been close to you when you thought your people were all dead, how patient and respectful he was to you. You were so busy finding the right words that you didn’t notice the wrinkles between Nick’s eyes when he frowned. You didn’t even notice the sobs he had uttered when he heard you say the words ’Me and Daryl’. You had said it without real intention, they were part of the speech, but still they had made Nick jump. Never had you been so sweet while talking to him… The sentence had slipped to betrayal and for Nick it was like a slap in the face.

“We had a fight a few days ago, I already told him about us, that’s not the problem, it was my fault, I didn’t want to… I just didn’t do well in the last few weeks.”, you sighed and your eyes fell on the cookies you had left on the silver paper they were lying on. Your appetite had now passed completely.

“I suppose I left feelings with him without explaining it to him, and I hid everything from you.”Finally, you looked up and looked into his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Nick…”

For a moment, you seemed to see anger, disappointment, and surprise in his face, but not for very long. Nick looked around the clearing, and when he looked back at you, his face was covered with an invisible mask. He did what he always did when he was in trouble and when he didn’t want to show himself. He put on a forced smile, one of those who had a specific purpose and it wasn’t one of the natural smiles. He wanted to look amused, he wanted to pretend he didn’t care. Nick nudged you.

“You don’t have to apologize, so many things happened and there was no time to talk.”

You seemed to be careful and couldn’t believe it was going so well. You knew Nick well and never saw him angry or screaming. It just wasn’t his character. He hid the anger, held back, and let his rage slowly run away in curses of evil sentences, sincerely pronounced with malice. That’s why they were the most painful.

“I feel like a bitch… Are you sure it’s okay?”

“Yes.” Nick stood up unhesitatingly and seemed so confident that you were okay. “Don’t worry, we’re friends, aren’t we?”, he said as he left, leaving you alone. He crossed the clearing and sat down next to Carol, watching as she sewed a dress for Judith. No one noticed the look he gave Daryl when he happened to pass by.

Flashback: ❝You were part of a large group then, but were attacked by other people. Inferior, but more desperate. They had all but escaped the massacre. The last image of the field they lived on were flames, screams, people struggling and trying to escape in panic. And those wild animals that they had forcibly taken and were still eating human beings. They were just there to eat, and they did. They were no longer humans and they were worse than Walker. The nightmares had tortured you for weeks, but no one dared to say anything. Madison’s face was distorted, Travis looked more tired than usual. Alicia had locked herself up and never seemed to want to talk again. You didn’t sleep and were always nervous. Ofelia had decided to stop eating, and Nick seemed to darken more with each new day. Each of you had to fight different demons. It was Ofelia who saw them first. A small group of people who had lit a fire during the night and didn’t care to keep their voices low. They were the men and women who had invaded their camp. The woman had hurried back as fast as possible, silently, signaling everyone to leave. It wasn’t as easy as they expected. The rival group found their tracks and started a pursuit that ended in an attack. They separated and Nick and you sought refuge in the basement of a church. You spent a sleepless night, your eyes wide open and your nerves strained, listening to the sounds around you. You knew that the cannibal group was still looking for you. Your worst fear was that the trapdoor would be opened over your heads and the face of one of those beasts would look at you with crazy, hungry eyes. The look you had seen while they ate people… Several hours had passed when you had a nervous breakdown. You could feel the tears that started to flow and couldn’t stop crying, you cried uncontrollably and wanted to stop, but couldn’t. And the more you cried, the more despair grew. Nick put his arms around you and held you close to his chest, not even knowing if he was doing something stupid or not, something useful or not. But it served to reassure you. Your breathing returned smoothly and after a while, Nick’s embrace brought you back to reality. It was like a tacit understanding. You raised your face to him and he lowered his head to you. You kissed, slowly undressed, hugged each other again and made love, lying on your clothes in this dirty cellar. You both thought you were going to die… You both wanted to try to feel less alone in those last moments. You didn’t die. But you felt less alone. And a short time later you had sex.

Alicia had been so anxious to get into the mall where you were just passing, changing and maybe finding something useful. Travis finally gave in, though he thought such a place would be full of Walkers. And he wasn’t wrong. The Walkers were everywhere, hiding in every corner. Luckily, someone had lived in front of them in this place. The living dead were spotted in all areas, but were mostly locked up in some shops. They spread their arms and growled as the group passed them, but they were harmless. Ofelia, Y/N and Chris had entered a clothing store, and the two women had begun to look at some clothes. It had been so long since you had looked after clothes. Not that you felt you had to go shopping, but it was still nice to be able to enjoy clothes. Shortly thereafter, the others joined you. Alicia and Nick had started to try on hats and sunglasses. Nick had taken off a hat and brought it you. He had surprised you in front of a mirror with a hanger and in an elegant wine-red dress. As soon as you saw him approaching, you had thrown it away. It was a stupid fantasy, this dress, you were ashamed of being discovered that way.

“Why are you putting it away?”, Nick had asked. “Ready for a stylish hat?” He put his hat on your head and you smiled.

“It’s useless to try…”

He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s useless not to try, most of the things we do today are relatively useless.”

So he insisted that you had finally taken the dress and entered the dressing room. A few minutes later, you had heard shuffling footsteps. You had taken the gun, the dress still on your back and your finger already on the trigger. You blurted out as you realized it was Nick. “You almost got me to shoot you! I thought you were a Walker!”

He had joined you and had turned you to the mirror in the locker room, then stopped in the door and stared at you as you looked in the mirror. “You look beautiful…”

“I wouldn’t have worn it before, too elegant, there aren’t many occasions to dress so well, unless you’re a Hollywood star or something like that.”

“I’ll leave you alone, if you want.”

It was still like a tacit understanding. Only this time, you did not believe you would die. It wasn’t as noble a thing as it was between lovers, you just wanted to have fun together, and it wasn’t that bad. You took off the dress and even Nick undressed completely. You were in a hurry, excited, impatient. You had sex and it wasn’t about this sickly apocalypse, where some would say: ’You’re the last decent person in the world, so I’ll do it with you.’, or ’Use it better before it’s too late.’. It was just beautiful, you enjoyed it and you felt normal. From that day on, you became lovers. More or less since he was fifteen, Nick spent more time outside the house than inside. In the last few years, before the virus destroyed civilization, it had probably let two-thirds of the time pass in the city. Heroin was being made in a cabin or by a friend… He was asleep, staring at the wall as if stunned, or slowly melting into panic. When the effects disappeared, hunger began. He had to get some money, then find his dealer and then start all over again. It was hard work, stressful and complex. He didn’t really understand how he could spend time at home: He was busier than a manager. In his worst moments, the most degrading ones, when he was forced to be in misery, alone, scared, regardless of what his dose was, he was told that sooner or later he would have to handle this stuff. The addiction was his life. Above all, he would have to deal with himself. Heroin was just a façade to live the way it felt better. It created a situation that was about survival, the risk was high, the anxiety tormented him, but without being restless and nervous. Without the adrenaline, without the uncertainty. A quiet life made him feel inadequate. He didn’t know why, maybe he had some mental issues, something deeper than he wanted to admit. He didn’t know why he had become like this, but he knew that it was difficult to stay home. More difficult to go out and face this idiot each time the effects of the drugs disappeared. His mother was at home and looked at him with resentment, as if she wanted to talk to him, but didn’t feel well about it. Then there was Alicia. She was his sister and he loved her, but it was difficult to be close only to Alicia. She was the beautiful one who got good grades, was excellent at school activities, she had many friends who loved her as well. The professors spoke of her just to praise her, and the adults thought she was such a beautiful girl. And then he. In comparison, the proof that if one child of siblings is good, the other will be a disaster. Nick knew that he’d thrown away all the opportunities he’d been given to do it diligently to do it on purpose. And then those looks when he came home… He prefers to sleep on a messy mattress in a desecrated place. But things had changed since the apocalypse. He had to stop his addiction and maybe that brought him home. Or rather, in the houses that this new world has chosen for them. When they found a place to sleep, it was not like camping, rather the opposite. It was like a party, it was something that doesn’t happen often. It made him feel like he was a kid and, with his mother, they grilled by the fire and slept in tents. It was special because it was something out of the ordinary. And now, in this new world, the extraordinary thing was to sleep in a normal bed, and Nick liked it.❞

It had been dark for a long time, but the moon was high enough in the sky to illuminate the small garden in front of the house and the porch on which the boy sat. There was nobody beside him, they were all inside to get ready for the night. Nick nibbled at a small patch of skin beside his thumbnail and began torturing the piece of flesh. It was a small, annoying and stinging evil. It was like the evil he had felt when you told him about Daryl. A rustling made him shift his eyes, his hand flew to the rifle resting on his knees. He remained silent for a while and listened motionlessly. His eyes wandered from right to left. He had just started to relax again when a very close sound made him jump. The door of the house had suddenly opened, and Daryl had come to the porch with the grace of a lame Walker. As soon as he saw him, the man looked away, looked around and began to walk back.

“I’ll go.”

Nick got up and walked to the door. When he was around, Daryl jumped up as if dodging a plague. The boy was too used to this kind of behavior to be offended, but he stopped to look directly at Daryl.

“I know everything, you don’t have to dodge me.”

Daryl was stunned for a few seconds, not fully aware of the boy’s words. It was probably the first sentence he had spoken to Daryl since his group had got into her boat. He never spoke about it for obvious reasons, and Nick respected his silence because he thought he was someone who wanted to be left alone, and that’s it. Then the man had seen how he dealt with you. As he approached, he glared at you as he thought no one saw him gently touching you. And then he discovered he didn’t want to talk to him.

“I do it because I fucking want it, not because I’m forced to go!”, Daryl snapped just before the boy crossed the threshold. Nick’s eyes were unmistakable. He was angry, it was the anger that kept him in check and that made him boil the blood in his veins until he could have damaged himself with it. An intelligent, motivated anger; very dangerous when in the hands of a human like him. A second sound made both of them turn. It came from the garden, which now looked more like a jungle than a well-kept suburban garden. Daryl took two steps forward on the porch, lifting his crossbow and gazing into the cold light of the moon. What he saw made him pale.

“Fuck…,” he said as he backed away. He almost fell over Nick, who was still standing in the doorway. He regained his balance and quickly pushed the boy in. “Wake up! We have to go! Now!”


	13. Chapter 13

Rick and Alicia went first. He tried to make as little noise as possible and they all crossed the street behind the big truck that had toppled over. The vehicle lay sideways, allowing them to implement the plan they had planned that night. Hopefully it’ll be fine, Rick thought as he saw the scrap heap on the road. Everything seemed to be against you all since that night. The first of them to see were Daryl and Nick from the porch of the house where they had sought shelter. The house was set on an almost imperceptible hill, but it was enough for the two men to see the flock of biter marching toward them, no matter where they were looking or where they were going. There were so many that you all had to flee as quickly as possible, taking your belongings and saying goodbye to the other things you had hoped to find there for so long. The Walkers had managed not to lose it, safely led by the smell, and the group had spent the whole night running away from the herd. It certainly wasn’t good that Judith had been so startled by the sudden escape because her screams were very lost. Michonne had sprained his ankle while escaping, Travis had almost risked being eaten. And last but not least, you had forgotten a rucksack of guns in the house you had just left. Fortunately, the flock had shrunk a little as you passed a handful of rather broad trees and left the other side to arrive near a freeway. You had killed some Walker that were too close to you and had hidden in several cars. It had been some time before they realized you had lost Nick and Daryl. After a few moments of panic, Rick had gone out to look for them, and he had just seen two blurry figures battling several Walkers. They locked themselves in a tiny tool shed near a house not far from the highway. The former sheriff hadn’t been able to see much of the two survivors, but had assumed they were. He trusted Daryl, he could get away even in the worst situations. And from what he had seen, Nick was not a freshman. Rick had come back and had worked with the others to come up with a plan to free them. Along with him, as a volunteer, there were Carol, Alicia, Travis and you, who had insisted on helping him.

“All right, we need to be careful.”, Rick began as you were all sheltered in a remote spot on the road, far enough away from the herd that was still raging at the shed. Judging by how it wobbled, the construction wouldn’t last much longer. You had to hurry. Tiredness was felt by everyone, it was now twenty-four hours since you hadn’t slept, and at least eight of them had fled.

“Alicia, you’ll enter the yard across the street, walk through the front yard and leave a gap in the fence. Here, use those scissors for it.”, the man said and handed her the knifes. “Please be careful. If you open the gate, you have to be silent, we do not want the herd to attack you immediately.”

The girl nodded seriously and took the tool Rick handed her. “Alright.”

“Carol, you and Y/N, you two are hiding in the overturned van over there, stay there, and watch out that the biter does not notice you, Alicia, when you’re done with the gate open, I want you here Travis and I will lure the herd into the backyard and we will emerge from the opening you made for us on the back, we will make sure these bastards are busy, if all is well The Walkers will be trapped there when we close the gate, Carol and Y/N, as soon as the herd is gone, you go to the shed.”

“Roger.” As you spoke, you straightened and made your way to the truck, but Rick abruptly stopped you and placed a hand on your shoulder. You turned around.

“We’re not sure if that’s Daryl and Nick, I know you’re all very worried, but I want us to make sure the right people are in there before we save them, we’re not taking any risks.” Rick gave you such a penetrating look that you just nodded. “Okay, let’s get started.”

The walls of the shed were shaking visibly. It had been some time since they were there, but Nick had already banished the disgusting sound of the biter in the background. If there was a particularity he was proud of, it was the way he could alienate himself in unpleasant situations. On command to remove the loud noises from his head and life was immediately much more relaxed. If he could do it to people, he would have had an added advantage. At least that’s when he does not want to keep his eyes on Daryl, who nervously walks from one side to the other in the tiny room. He had that indecipherable expression on his face that made his irritation in his chest bloom. The thing that made him even more annoyed was that the man probably did not even understand what he’d done to him. He had taken something important from him, something he had never had before and that was even more precious to find at that moment. How many chances have there been to meet another person like Kate since the end of the world? No, Y/N couldn’t be replaced. With her, he felt less alone, he felt protected and loved. He could tell her everything, he knew she would not judge him, she would just listen and understand the reason for his words. Y/N was the best person he had ever met, and because of her wondrous nature, whose real reason she never mentioned, he had decided to be her friend. And Daryl took it from him. Her relationship had already changed. He saw the hesitation in the girl’s eyes every time he talked to her, as if she were afraid to see him angry. It was the way she looked at him. A look he hated and whom he had never seen before. No, he wouldn’t lose Y/N, he would not have allowed it. He would have stuck to it as long as he could, and if that meant killing the obstacle called Daryl Dixon, he would. After all, he could not offer her more than Nick. To be honest, Nick did not even understand how Y/N could fall in love with this man, after all, this Redneck was so quiet and rude. And she was actually someone who liked to talk and be happy, even though everyone around her was in a bad mood. Maybe they just went to bed together…

Nick smacked his lips angrily. For him and Y/N, sex was just fun, a way to spend time in an adorable way when they wanted it. At the same time, they also had something deeper and more precious. Even if Daryl got her to bed, it meant nothing. Nick would not allow her relationship to be frayed by the man’s presence, he would keep Y/N to herself and bring her back to her.

“If you move on and make noises, they’ll never go.”, the boy said and followed Daryl with his eyes. The man stopped in the middle of the raun. “They know we’re here, they will not go if we move or not!” He seemed to want to start an endless walk, but maybe he was just tired and wanted to stay awake. Daryl sighed and dropped to the floor in front of Nick, his back against the wall. As soon as he sat down, the shed got a big kick and Daryl was thrown forward. Hastily he left the wall and stood with his legs crossed, his hands on his knees.

“Rick will help us and get us out of here.”

Despite his disgust, Nick felt the need to calm him down somehow. That was a situation, Daryl’s brother Merle ‘The shit of all shit!’ would call. He was locked in a room with the woman’s lover whom he also loved and the walls threatened to collapse. It was really an extremely shitty situation… The boy, however, didn’t seem so upset. His calm was almost disturbing given the situation they were in. Daryl soon realized that the more dangerous a situation was, the more relaxed Nick was.

“They not only smell us, they also hear sounds and you make noise.” Nick stretched, his hands resting on his lower back. “They don’t have much concentration, and if we’re lucky some animals will come by and they may follow them, they’ll all disappear one by one.”

Daryl shot him an angry look. “Are you an Apocalypse theorist or what?”

“No, but I spent a lot of time in their midst.”

The man didn’t understand that sentence and did not even have time to think about what he meant by that. Before he could even think about it, Nick said: “If Y/N was here I’d ask her for a massage, she can do that very well, maybe you already know…” The boy had stretched out his legs and was watching Daryl with a crooked and arrogant smile. Daryl stiffened at the words. Despite this dangerous and deadly situation, his head was full of pictures of the girl he loved, who massaged Nick, in places of his body where he would never have imagined they actually existed. He suppressed these thoughts that only made him grow madder in silent jealousy. A jealousy and a rage he had never experienced before, let alone felt. He didn’t answer and just gave Nick a murderous look.

“…Or maybe not.” Nick hovered these words in the middle of the room and remained silent for a while. “You look kind of nervous, Daryl…”, Nick added after a while in a confident tone.

“You don’t know shit about me! Now shut the hell up, before I stick your fucking head out of the window!”

Nick gave a faint grin, which immediately faded again. “You know, Y/N likes to be massaged too…”

Daryl gasped, lunging for him, grabbing him, lifting him up by one arm on his collar and throwing him back to the ground with full force. Instinctively, Nick put his hands on his neck, but realized that the man wasn’t trying to strangle him.

“Shut the fuck up!”

“It’s the truth…” Even lying on the floor, with Daryl over him, now tensing all his muscles and pushing Nick further into the floorboards of the shed that he could barely breathe, Nick had an air of authority around him floating around him, paired with something treacherous, provoked Daryl on. “Don’t lie to yourself Dixon, you can not give her what she wants, none of us can!”

“What do you even know, you fucking asshole!”

“I know her better than you know her, and you know it!” At these words, Daryl’s pressure on the boy’s chest and larynx diminished.

“She wants what everyone wanted, even before all this!”, Nick said nastily.

Daryl could hear the young man’s words, but he didn’t fully understand them. He had stopped listening to the first movement.

“I know Y/N doesn’t want a bastard like you!”

Nick had said it so confidently… He blinked and ran his tongue over his lips.

“What do you mean?”, Daryl asked for explanation.

“You can not give her that, you have nothing to offer her, you’re a nothing, a nobody.”

“And you can do it, or what?”

Daryl grabbed his shirt, squeezed it down a bit, and pulled back until he was a safe distance away.

“No.”

The boy sat up and rubbed his chest.

“No one could do it earlier, and now less than ever before, there is no one to live with forever, people are selfish, it’s impossible to go hand in hand sooner or later, because we get tired of each other, but what Y/N and I have, that’s something very special… And you bastard should keep yourself out at any cost!”

Daryl didn’t want to admit it, but Nick’s words had hit him hard. More than anything else, they had hurt him very much. It was true he did not know Y/N as long as the boy knew her. And it was also true that these two had a special relationship. And yet, the thought of losing her disturbed him and caused him a physical nausea.

“You don’t have to decide, I think.”

Daryl crossed his arms over his chest, almost pouting like a child.

“It’s up to Y/N to decide what to do with her life.”

Nick didn’t stop that sharp, sly, focused, grim look at the same time. A look that often went unnoticed, it had something Machiavellian, subtle to associate with its diabolical behavior.

“Fuck you.”

The herd of Walkers trotted with the usual tired step. They surrounded the truck and took it as an obstacle of little importance. None of the creatures even hesitated for a moment near the vehicle and you were grateful. Your plan worked, the Walkers moved away from the shed and she was sure that Travis and Rick were doing a good job, as they heard no noise from the fight. As soon as you saw that the herd was getting smaller, you could come out. Of course there were some disadvantages… Carol pokes her nose in the sleeve of her blouse and coughs. The corpse of the driver, still tied to his driving position and decidedly dead, judging at least from the scattered mass of brains on the windshield, made a nauseating smell that you couldn’t get used to.

“It shouldn’t be enough. But we will be able to get them out soon. As long as they don’t get the idea to go out on their own.”, you said, curled up in the small room behind the seats. Wedged between the passenger seat and the dashboard, Carol didn’t answer immediately. “Remember what Rick said, he didn’t see them well, we have to be careful, it may not even be Daryl and Nick.”

“Of course they are!”, you snapped. You could not imagine what you would do if you didn’t find them alive. You believed that you couldn’t survive the loss of Nick, not after you finally found him again. And Daryl… well, you still didn’t have a fitting description for your relationship with him in your mind, he wasn’t your boyfriend and he wasn’t just any member of the group. But you knew that if something happened to him, you would suffer enormously… Carol settled in her uncomfortable corner. When she started to speak, she was partially grateful that there was enough room between her and you to keep her eyes off the meeting. She was no longer a coward for a long time but was somehow ashamed to sustain this conversation. But someone had to do it. You were locked in the trunk of a car and who knows how many more hours until the herd passes by. Carol couldn’t suppress her laugh. “Daryl and Beth must have smelled bad at the time because they had never been discovered by Walker.”

You felt a little regret in these words. There was so much you did not know about Daryl. “Beth?”

“Maybe you’ve heard about it, she was Maggie’s younger sister, she stayed with us for a long time, she died in such a stupid way… It was an accident.” Carol’s voice was monotonous, but there was a hint of bitterness in it. “Daryl liked her very much.”

For a second you were curious to know what this girl was like. A person who loved a man like Daryl was someone who was definitely worth noticing. Carol seemed to read your thoughts, because she added a little later: “She was a very pretty girl, very young and incredibly sweet.” She paused. “I think Daryl felt he had to protect her like an older brother, he didn’t feel for her what he feels for you, if you want to know that.”

You moved unseen. “I don’t want to know.”, you said coldly.

“Maybe you might be interested, I’m very interested in Daryl, he’s my best friend, I think you understood that, I wish he was happy, he’s lost so much, and he deserves something or someone to make him happy.”, she sighed. “He… He is not very good at talking to people.”

A Walker crawled over the roof of the truck, but didn’t look at you both. With one corner of your eye, you saw his eyes point to a point in front of you. For a careless moment, you wondered what would happen if you suddenly opened the car door with all the Walkers around. You felt a bit like a kid, and Carol was the teacher who cursed you for a shameful act, and you knew what it was.

“For whatever you decide to do, Y/N, I would like if you choose Daryl, don’t let him suffer any more, he has suffered so many times.”

“He’s going to suffer anyway, if not because of another person, whatever I decide, somebody will always suffer.”

“I know, but if we love someone, we want to spare them that pain, or wouldn’t you want to spare him?” Carol fell silent, then poked her head over the window.

“Let’s go before anything else happens.”

With the knife in her hand, the woman opened the car door and immediately a biter stuck his head inside. She rammed the blade into his skull and set off.

It took you a bit longer to get out. You killed two Walkers, who wanted to slip into the cab, and then managed to get the corpses out of the way. When you were outside, you took a moment to inhale the morning air. Clean and fragrant compared to what you had smelled until then. With your eyes you looked to Carol and saw that she was already near the shed. The Walkers were almost all trapped within the yard and went back further. The gate was still open and there were no traces of Alicia. She would have to close it as soon as the herd was inside. You tried not to think about it. One thing at a time, you told herself, looking back at Carol. The woman’s speech had irritated you and you were happy to get out of that truck so you would no longer be forced to talk to her. You followed her, repeating her words in your head. What did she know about what you felt for Daryl? Or for Nick? What could she know about the feelings that connected you, what they had been through, and more generally about the connection between you? Of course, you couldn’t deny yourself that you wanted to see Daryl happy, but Nick liked you too. You couldn’t quantify the love you felt for both, you liked both very much… You stepped forward as you approached the shed. Obviously, it’s the kind of love that feeds a person, you told yourself, calculating the distance between you and a Walker. At this thought, your mind flew into a phantom world. You imagined a future with Nick and you couldn’t help but see darkness. Not because he was inferior to Daryl, but because you could not imagine the future with him as a real couple. Nick was the person you most understood, the person who could confide in you, and you felt that all this would be lost if you were a couple. Besides, you had never been so sweet together in the romantic sense…

But it was also true that the connection of the word 'romantic’ with Daryl was like mixing sugar with salt. You realized, however, that Daryl, though you barely understood him and his motivations, mingled with you despite your differences. You were fine when he was around and you realized that Daryl had made you realize he wanted you. This thought made your heart swell with excitement.

“Carol!”

Daryl’s voice brought you back from your thoughts to reality. You looked up and saw the two hugging each other, the woman quietly asking him something and looking behind her. You smiled as you saw him, but in Daryl’s eyes you saw only horror. Before you understood what was going on, one hand was dropped on your shoulder. Daryl’s scream didn’t even touch your ear. You turned abruptly and pushed the Walker away, but fell backwards and to the ground. The monster stumbled before falling on you. It growled, slobbered and stretched its neck as far as possible and bit into the air. You stretched out your arms to keep him at bay. The resistance of your muscles to the Walker’s attacks, coming desperately closer, was the only thing between you and death.

“Fuck!” Daryl couldn’t prevent an oath at the sight of this scene. Finally, he did an arrow in the crossbow, but the tragedy continued before he could activate the mechanism. The man looked startled at the pieces of the broken arrow falling to the ground. However, he had no time to put another arrow in the barrel. Nick had the slightest tension Daryl had ever seen and almost fell on the Walker that threatened you. He tore the monster around and began beating the dead man’s skull to the ground with more and more violent blows without any weapons. Daryl first heard the Walker’s skull break with a loud crack. Then he saw the rotted brain bleed into pieces by the force with which the boy hit his head on the floor. As soon as he was sure the Walker was dead, Nick left him, panting and reaching you on all fours. “Are you alright?” He looked over you, his fingertips brushing your body, looking for signs of bites or scratches.

You sat up, your heart still pounding and you croaked. “Yes…”

Nick hugged you, clutching your back, stroking your neck with one hand. His expression was really scared. As soon as his breathing normalized and he realized that you were out of harm’s way, Nick looked up to see Daryl and Carol still standing at the door of the shed.

He just looked at Daryl with a sullen challenge and held you even tighter in his arms…


	14. Chapter 14

"Looks new.", Carl said. "It sure works.", added Travis.

"It must have been a fishing vessel for a big catch, it has nets and is very wide, it has to have a cold room where we can store our things."

"Will there be enough room for all of us?", Rick asked.

"Usually these boats have crew cabins." Nick narrowed his eyes as the sun shone into his face. "And even kitchens, as well as equipment to stay at sea for weeks."

"Perfect!", Carol commented.

"Yes..." Michonne withdrew her sword from its scabbard. "We just have to eliminate the extremely many Walkers on it..." The group members looked at each other indecisively. This ship was definitely like a prison for a herd of Walkers. The living dead swarmed on it, they looked like sardines in a big box. The survivors didn't even know where to start. The boat was nice, big, the security systems still seemed to be intact, like the lifeboats and the rest, everything was in place and probably perfectly inside. Too bad for this ship, if Walkers would waste it... "Maybe we could lure them out.", Carl suggested, searching for his father. "But how?", Alicia asked. "Should we stand down and wait for them to rain down on us?" Carl glared at her. "We can create a kind of construction around the boat and kill them from there." Daryl looked at Rick's eyes. "Scaffold? Yeah, I understand." Daryl returned to the ship and wondered how they could build such a structure without bases. At the bottom of the ship was in a bend of the river, but to reach them, they had to swim. He was focused, his eyes fixed on the boat when he noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye. He was upset when he saw Nick approaching Y/N and mumbling something mysteriously into her ear. With his fingertips, the boy touched your arm, your shoulder, and went down to the wrist, in a gesture that seemed very familiar and intimate. Daryl saw you nodding, but with a serious frown and thoughtful eyes.

"Nick and I will leave.", you said, stepping forward. You looked at Madison as if asking for her permission, or as if you wanted to apologize for the decision. The woman tensed, her hands on her hips.

"Are you sure it's our only chance?", she asked, pointing to Travis. He looked at the boat with a knowledgeable look. Some Walkers had noticed you and growled at you, but didn't seem too convinced.

"We have been looking a long time and this is more than a good opportunity, it is a stroke of luck, it will take a long time to find a boat under these conditions, I can not be 100% sure, but if so, I would say it hardly was ever used."

Madison nodded imperceptibly. Then she met Nick's eyes. "You have to be careful.", she said it like an order, as if explaining a fact to you instead of a recommendation. This sentence seemed to release something in the group: Travis and Alicia moved in your direction.

"I saw some of them in the woods just minutes from here, but only a few.", said the man.

"We need a lifeboat and something for climbing."

"That's what I think, too." Madison joined you at the last moment and kept talking. "There are houses on this site, we will find something suitable."

"What is your plan?" Rick approached you and put a hand on your shoulder, looking at you with questioning eyes and a slightly disgruntled frown, not wanting to interrupt the momentum of the group, their stories and their little compromises. It was interesting to see how Madison acted, a role that she undoubtedly had as a mother and that had been expanded and adapted in this new-world situation to protect her family.

"We cover ourselves with blood and guts of the Walkers, so we get on the boat and kill them one by one."

Rick glanced at the boat, his hands on his hips."It's a good plan, I and Glenn come with us, we already know that, not pleasant but helpful."

"No." Nick chose a pair of jeans and a tank top from his backpack. "It's better for two, we'll reduce their attention, one kills them, the other throws them to the ground because they will not fall by themselves, and the sudden movements attract them, and even if only one of them would realize that we are none of them they will attack us."

"But... So many?" Michonne stared at the boat. The Walkers were so close together that they could barely move. "Maybe it's too dangerous."

"We've already done something like this.", you said with a fleeting smile. "Nick is an expert on something like that and he knows how to move between them."

You chose weapons that were thin, almost invisible, and tested them with the palm of your hand.

"Let me see." Nick joined you and did exactly the same thing. "Good."

The two of you had chosen cotton clothes, mostly old fabrics. You explained to Carl that it was necessary to get the smell of blood. At that moment, Alicia and Travis came out of the small forest that lay beside the river. They pulled a dead Walker from behind, on their feet and shoulders. "That's the only one we found.", Alicia said, leaving the dead body lying on the floor.

"That's enough." You put up a knife and stabbed the belly of the body. You buried your hands in the creature's dark guts and took out a foul-smelling porridge and threw it on your clothes and began to distribute it without any hesitation.

"If the Walker is too old, the blood is thick and hard to use.", Nick told Maggie, who had come to look at you. Daryl stood by the side, half worried and half disgusted with the scene. Worried about what you were about to do, disgusted by the way you and Nick were in harmony. You hadn't lied: You got along, you were really friends.

Daryl lowered his binoculars and turned to Madison and Glenn: "Once again and they'll be done."

"Perfect." She pushed a dead body into the flames and then left. The fire had just been lit and had not really gotten underfoot yet. The black, unhealthy smoke was just starting to rise above them, but the pungent smell had already plagued the air before. It had taken a while for Nick and you to kill the Walkers on the ship. Much to the annoyance of Daryl, everyone, even Rick, admitted that it had been a good plan that only two could have done better and that Nick and you were the right people for the job. The man gave Rick a sidelong glance and looked annoyed. It was as if he wanted to use these words to legitimize your relationship... Daryl wiped his bloody hands on a damp cloth. If he started blaming others for his mistakes, he wouldn't have got far in this new world. On the boat, each Walker, one after the other, had been eliminated, so subtle that none of them had noticed. They hadn't even moved in the direction of the survivors. You rammed your knife through the brains of the monsters. Most of them were there for a long time, the flesh was flabby and even the skull bones had lost their hardness, but to be more certain, you had stabbed repeatedly and chosen this method. The living dead didn't notice, didn't growl and were not excited. One can even say that they died a peaceful death. A luxury that only a few have to offer. Nick positioned himself behind the chosen Walker and as soon as he collapsed, he took him under his armpits and accompanied him to the ground, without attracting the eyes of others. It was not the fastest tactic, but it was the best thing you could do. When all had been eliminated, Nick settled on a lifeboat and while the boat was still in the air, he and you began to recharge the bodies. You dropped the boat and Nick reached the bank of the river.

"There are two other boats like this on board.", he told the others when he was within range. "Let's all take us and bring them ashore."

"Isn't it easier to throw them in the water?",Maggie asked, taking a few steps closer and grabbing the boat to pull it to the mainland. "Then we risk blocking and overloading the engine and it will be enough for some of us to take the other boats." Rick, Maggie, Travis and Carl got on the boat with the boy. Carol and Maggie stayed aboard to help you, the others started running back and forth between the small lifeboats of corpses. By the shore, you had decided that you would burn the bodies, and set the fire just before you left, to avoid catching sight of other groups. At least you wanted to make sure that the water wouldn't be polluted. You formed a fairly high stake and by the time the last charge arrived, the fire had struck its roots and didn't risk extinguishing itself before it burned most of the pile. You all came aboard, and while Travis and Daryl took charge of starting the ship, the others were busy clearing the bridge. Madison ordered Nick and you to wash yourselves in the river and then return to the ship. The stink you emitted was disgusting. When you done, you were exhausted and tired in the evening. Travis put his hand on the engine and realized what fortune you had found. This was a modern boat, equipped with a lot of technology, and he knew that the kinetic strength of the boat, as long as it was sailed, would have guaranteed electricity and all the comforts associated with it. The ship was built so that it was self-sufficient, a transformer brought the movement of the electrical energy of the boat, which was used by the boat itself and, if possible, also stored. You were on a self-sufficient basis in a world where an independent, guaranteed life was still possible. Travis promised to learn more about this system: If it were broken, it would have been terrible not to light the lamp for reading. Alicia turned off the flashlight as a flickering, yellowish light excited the engine room, at first intermittently and then stabilizing. Travis looked up at the ceiling and smiled. A kind of roar told him that the engine had been started and that the boat had been put into operation, like a big animal waking up from a long sleep. The man hugged Alicia in a kind of harsh hug.

"I'll see how it goes in the cab." He left the room, followed by her tender look. The girl turned and exchanged a look with Daryl. It seemed to him that her lips contracted as she looked at him. Of course, he told himself, she was looking for her brother. He began, without saying a word, his grumpy way of doing things. Before he could approach the door, he heard Alicia's voice. "Daryl? May I talk to you for a moment?" The man reluctantly turned around. As if to stay away from the enemy, he leaned against the opposite wall with his arms crossed over his chest. He knew very well that the attitudes often got people into trouble the more they didn't know how to react. He hoped in his heart that Alicia did the same. He didn't want to talk to her. "It's pointless to look at me like that." She stared at him with stern eyes, as if she were abusing him. Astonished and a little annoyed, but with no intention of showing it, Daryl released his arms and dropped them over his hips. "I'm not watching you in any way." She raised her eyebrows. "As you wish, I just wanted to talk to you about Y/N and Nick." Daryl cursed inwardly. Seeing you and Nick so in tune with each other irritated him each and every time, killing off a small part of his self-esteem, the hope he had elicited from himself. The truth was, he sometimes felt like a coward, and the best thing a coward could do was to let go. Whoever saw you together would have said you were meant for each other, even though you were a special person and Nick just a little arrogant asshole... Maybe the last part was dictated only by the hate Daryl had for Nick but that's the way it is. "I talked to Y/N, she told me everything that happened since we split up, she told me about you, about the others in the group, about Carl and Judith... She told me a lot and you are very important to her..." There was something implied in these words that Daryl would have misunderstood. He hoped with all his heart that you hadn't revealed your most intimate moments to the girl. He wondered, trying so hard not to blush why the girls wanted to fall in love with each other like in romantic movies. For a second he imagined you and Alicia telling each other your romantic problems, killing one Walker at a time. He continued this ridiculous though funny thought. "I just wanted to ask you not to take it too seriously with Nick, he's my brother and I know him, I know what an asshole he can be."

"He is."

Alicia nodded.

"I will not have that fucked up conversation.", Daryl said harshly. Even before he had finished the sentence, Daryl turned and headed for the exit. He stepped through the engine room door, but Alicia called after him again. The man became impatient, his eyes were annoyed. "What do you want?"

"Listen, Nick is like that... He has his own mind, but one day he'll understand that this isn't what he wants with Y/N, he was not so interested in her before you arrived. He loves these situations where he's desperate to get something special, in this case it's Y/N, it's like he's only happy when he takes out the worst kind of himself around people like you to provoke with it."

"What are you talking about?" Daryl gave up and turned his attention back to Alicia. The girl's words had alarmed him. Was Nick dangerous? Was the group in danger? Y/N... Was she in danger?

"First of all, Nick was... He was a junkie, obviously it stopped when the world went to pieces, you can not survive unless you're clear in your head, and for a while he started doing absurd things, himself to put him in danger, the adrenaline made him feel like intoxicated, the more dangerous a situation was, the more he plunged headfirst into it. Then he met Celia Flores, I don't know what that woman told him, what strange beliefs she had imprinted on him, but suddenly he left. We broke up and Nick went with the Walkers."

The girl's gaze was lost in the void, it was like talking to herself. "He seemed to be one of them."

The man looked at her without saying a word. They had never talked more than they had to, but Daryl still didn't understand why Alicia told him these things.

"I don't know if there really is no reason to be insecure, the fact that he is no longer addicted to drugs doesn't mean that he is no longer dependent, he will always be addicted on something, no matter what. But I think it's Y/N right now."

Daryl looked away, moistening his lips, undecided whether to speak or not. In the end, he thought he couldn't go wrong. "It'll always be that way, you gotta accept it."

He hoped she understood, that he was honest, that he gave her advice. This boy reminded him of Merle. The eternal straggler who never makes a correct decision. It took years for Daryl to understand that, but he did: Merle had never fought for the right decision, he was interested in taking the wrong path because that was the only way he could go on. A push, a reason to live. He was restless in a quiet life. He preferred to always feel balanced, as Alicia had said. It was the same for Nick.

"I know... What I wanted to tell you is that Nick is a good person, and I love Y/N as if she's a sister, but she never understood that, she didn't understand his closeness, as a woman. If they were together, it would destroy them, they would become obsessive to each other without realizing it, it would be hard, and there is no choice but to finally break that contact, otherwise it will eventually break Y/N and then no one can save her anymore."

"So you're asking me to stay with Y/N so she can't be with your brother?"

"In a way, I wouldn't tell you all these things if I wasn't sure you cared about her, just... just don't give up because of Nick.", Alicia smiled slightly. "I love my brother, but sometimes he behaves like a real ass."

In a week it wasn't possible to travel far. Sleeping, eating, hunting, research took a lot of time and a week has now passed. But you were worried. Seven days had passed since you decided to dock the ship, and Daryl, Michonne, Rick, Travis, and Alicia were looking for medicines. Judith felt sick and probably had a cold. Her stomach didn't contain anything, neither solids nor liquids. In the evening she got a fever and she was weak and less curious than usual. Maggie was afraid she could give whatever she had to the other survivors. You were sitting with your legs dangling over the edge of the bridge, your face toward the shore, binoculars around your neck and headphones in your ears. You never heard the music too loud, there was a danger that something would happen and you wouldn't hear it. You turned the CD player that Daryl had given you and watched as the disc turned and the print on the facade lost its shape and became nothing more than a shapeless spot. You hadn't talked to Daryl yet. A few days had passed since you were on the new boat, busy from morning to night. It took a long time to clean the bloodstained bridge and discover the boat before. Most of you had settled in the cabins except for Daryl, who insisted on sleeping outside. You, because you did not want to choose a room without Daryl, but you didn't accept Nick's offer either. So you slept on the sofas in the living room of the ship. You looked a little farther to the shore. Maybe before you talked to Daryl, you needed to clear things up with Nick. You didn't know where to start, but it had to be done. Just as you were thinking about all these things, Nick came closer and sat next to you. You pretended to immerse yourself in the music so as not to be disturbed by him. 'This isn't really the kind of behavior people expect when they want to give a serious speech...', you thought, biting your lip. You felt Nick tapping your left shoulder. You removed the headphones and turned to him.

"You found me..."

Nick smiled. "After a while it will be easy for me."

You sighed and turned off the CD player, then picked up the binoculars and began to search the area to see if anyone was approaching. You thought you saw a distant movement, but it disappeared as fast as it had come. You waited a moment and decided that it had been an animal. Nick studied the music player and the CD in it.

"That's cool, it'll take a while for you to find that."

"I didn't find it, it's a gift from Daryl."

"Mhm..."

You sat in silence for a while. When you turned to your friend, you saw a frown on his face. Constricted eyebrows, arms crossed on his chest. You almost smiled at the sight: A capricious little boy, that's how he looked. A boy you liked very much. You poked him gently in the ribs and when Nick turned around, he smiled at you. "Don't look so cute, you remind me of Alicia if she does not catch a single fish."

The boy relaxed again, but you felt the air gather between you. "Are you worried?"

"A little bit."

"Are you sure?"

"I would say-..."

"Or are you worried about that Redneck?"

You sighed and the boy's eyes searched for you. He waited to meet your eyes before asking. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Yes..."

"Okay, let's talk about it."

You put your leg across the bridge and just let one dangle over the edge.

"Yeah, I'm very worried about everyone, especially Daryl, he... I like him a lot and I will tell him. I'm sorry that it took me so long to understand it and I kept you both busy..."

The young man nodded and avoided your gaze. It was the second time you had told him that Daryl was an important person for you. He recognized very well how you looked for him, how you smiled when you talked and looked cheerful. Nick understood the situation between you and didn't want to listen to what he saw. You had continued your stubborn journey, and so you told him the truth. If you thought about it for a moment, Nick wouldn't mind. There was no more sexual component in your friendship and without that, your friendship had something relaxing about it.

"You started to look at me the way everyone else had looked at me, you look like you're just waiting for the moment when I'll disappoint you."

"What...?"

"Yes, that's right, since you've found this group."

You pursed your lips. "So it's not just about Daryl."

Nick shrugged and looked away. "I dont know."

"Listen, I understand that you're angry, but... I feel like I've just run to you as soon as I've seen you, like the others are invisible, Nick!"

You took him by the shoulder and forced him to look you in the eye. "You can not think I don't like you anymore, if you think that about me then you don't know me."

"You replaced me.", Nick replied coldly.

You were driven by an inward rage, like a bolt of lightning that made you tremble. "Don't play with me, I was there when it all started, we weren't a couple, Nick, we never were!"

"Maybe we were it just for myself."

"You always said that life as a couple is not possible, that it wasn't possible before and now less than ever, we have always spoken openly and I always told you that I didn't think so. But I believe in love and that's what I want for myself and for the person next to me!" The voice of you rose and your sentences became fast and hasty.

"We never hid, if we had found someone else, we would have stopped our story, and now it is for me, and don't tell me you all just want friendship."

"It's not the same, I didn't know about it!"

Nick slightly raised his voice, but it was as if he had screamed. He almost never did, only meaning that danger was near. The boy stood up, his cheeks pale pink. He leaned over you and pointed his index finger at your chest.

"It's useless for you to tell this shit, it's like I say, you cheated on me!", he said and left without looking back and his hands were shaking with anger...


	15. Chapter 15

Nick had noticed the looks his mother had been throwing at him for some time. Several days had passed and all the survivors on the ship had become seriously worried. After all, there was his sister in this group and Travis. And even if it sometimes seemed a bit ignorant, Rick was there too, and surely he would never have wanted something to happen to him, just like Michonne. And then there was Daryl… He could get shoot in the head, have an arrow stuck in his ass and maybe even burn and Nick wouldn’t mind and care less about him. But of course he didn’t want him to die… Nick was also suggested for a small research mission to make sure they weren’t in trouble. Carl, Glenn, you, and Carol had stood up as a group to Madison’s words, saying, “I’ll come with you.” Madison, who had taken the word of a commander, prevailed in the usual manner, a firm tone but with a serene background, deciding that they shouldn’t all go.

“Me, Carl, Nick and Carol, the rest of you stay here, you have to take care of Judith and the boat and nobody should stay alone.”

“But, Madison -…”

“No Y/N, you stay here.” Her voice had been so rough you didn’t dare to answer. You had always been respectful to her. Because the decisions of this woman were never made by chance. You had turned on your heel and disappeared. Your lips twisted into a grimace. The group had been on the road for a while, with Nick and his mother in the lead, Carl and Carol not far away. Madison had purposely tackled Nick so she could talk to him without being heard. And the boy knew that she would do it as if she was trying to find out about his acquaintances or what he had done. They were still visible at a distance of a mile, but they couldn’t be bypassed.

“What’s wrong?” Tired of being questioned and being watched with that insistent gaze, Nick looked at her with dark eyes. He wasn’t very convinced though. His mother was one of the few who couldn’t be intimidated by this look, reserved for those he didn’t want to talk to.

“You should talk to Y/N.”, the woman said bluntly. For a while the boy was quiet. “No. And it’s none of your business anyway.”

“I know, I just think it’s a shame you’re ruining your friendship just because you’re so stupid.”

Now, Nick decided to keep silent all the time.

“Nick, I’m not a sociologist, but you’d have to be blind not to understand what happened, just think that you don’t deserve this hate just because she’s kept up with her life.” At this, the boy suddenly turned to her. “No!”

“Y/N did what she had to do to survive, so she went on and found someone else on her way.”

“She replaced me.”, he said bitterly. Madison snorted. “Nick, don’t be an idiot now, we all knew what was going on between you two, don’t tell me that it was true love, she didn’t replace you because Daryl Dixon isn’t her boyfriend, she found a companion and she had the right. I don’t know what I would do if I had lost Travis, I don’t know what we all would have done.”

Nick kept walking, his eyes lost in the dense vegetation. He hated listening to his mother’s sermons. Especially when it came to the people around him. Somehow, Madison could make him weigh up every single action, as if everything he had done until then was stupid.

“Nick! Madison!” Carl waved in her direction, not far from Carol he looked around the ground, obviously looking for something. The boy had found a backpack that Madison immediately recognized as Alicia’s. “There are hints!”, he said pointing to the grass. Carol put her hands in the backpack and pulled out some scattered medicines, a few syrup bottles, and a tube of toothpaste. “They had found supplies and toiletries.” She looked over her shoulder, where the footprints were still fresh. “They certainly wanted to go back, but something stopped them.”Nick reached out and picked up the backpack. “Let me see, it may be, but it doesn’t have to.”

“Why?”

“Maybe it’s not the right antibiotics, I explained Alicia exactly what to look for, maybe they simply lost her as they continued.” The boy picked up the medicine and read the name of the it. “No, you’re right, they’re the right ones, they came back.”

“Something was wrong and they had to leave…”

Carl leaned over the ground and ran his hand over the damp grass. “We can follow the trail, I know how.” He looked at Carol and asked for help. “Daryl taught me.”

Nick snorted at these words; He was just raising his eyes to the sky, but the look Carol gave him was enough to make him regain control of himself, and he realized he was in the minority. Apparently everyone worshiped this Redneck with the crossbow and snorting wouldn’t help him, because he would even put him in a worse light than others.

“Let’s go!”, said the woman, reaching Carl and joining him. Madison followed them and behind them was Nick, with a lazy step. They walked silently for a while, but rather quickly. Carl went fast, sure, almost thrilled. “The tracks are clear, here’s a sign that they got through here.”, he said, pointing to a hint on the floor that Nick barely noticed.

“How can you say that they were and not the infected?”

“The Walkers are lighter, very sluggish and repetitive, which is very easy to read, if you know what to look for, but it looks like a lot more…”

“Okay…” Nick looked around and began to search for hints and signs of the passage of the group. Carl was right, they were many, even he started noticing it and he wasn’t thrilled. Slowly a warning light flashed behind his eyes, at first weak, then brighter. There was something he missed, but it was right in front of him. He stopped in the middle of the road, the backpack resting on his shoulder and his eyes lost in the grass. Carol went to him and felt that his mother was beyond him and barely touched him. The boy leaned forward and reached for a smoked cigarette. She was still warm.

“Wait a minute.” He didn’t answer and turned around. And at that moment an alarm siren sounded inside.

“Mom!”

Nick threw the stump back on the floor and walked to the others. It was no coincidence and he was stupid enough not to notice it. He hadn’t seen Daryl smoke a cigarette for weeks, those tracks were so visible and the backpack was overturned…

“Mom!” He started to run, but just before he rounded the path he heard rifle fire, it was more by instinct and experience that he jumped off the path and quickly hid among the trees, throwing himself in time behind a dense bush. He heard some screams, then silence and confused footsteps, then a scream that came closer and closer.

“Not all of them are it yet, but I think only four are missing.”

“Four are no problem.”

“After all, better than thirteen.”

From a crack in the middle of the bushes, Nick saw a thick man with unkempt beard and sunglasses, pointing with a sawed-off shotgun on his mother’s back. Madison didn’t move, keeping a stubborn look on her face, as if the man behind him was a child who had to endure without even paying any attention to it. He was equally surprised by Carol’s attitude, visibly nervous and with tears in her eyes. She moved uncomfortably, maybe they had done something to her. But then he noticed the looks around him and he knew the woman was looking for him. He also noted that she was pretending to be afraid. Not far from them was Carl, held by a third man.

“I can go alone.”

“I think so, kid, you would run so much to stumble into your beautiful boat, it’s a pity that it will soon be our beautiful ship.”

“If you think it’s so stupid to run away while I have a rifle on my back, then you’re the idiot.”

His companions laughed with enthusiasm and he twisted Carl’s arm, screaming with pain.

“Go and shut the fuck up!”

Nick crouched even more into the bushes as he saw the men approaching and didn’t move until their footsteps faded and eventually disappeared. He sat down on the floor, holding Alicia’s backpack like a stuffed animal in his arms. It was clear that they had lured them into a trap, and they had fallen for it without even smelling it. These men had long ago thrown an ace on the group: They knew they had a boat, they probably knew where they were and they knew how many they were. At least the rest of the group had an advantage: They thought that those in the boat were unaware of the impending attack. Nick would immediately return to the river to warn the rest, together they would think about what to do. They have always done that. Someone attacked them and they tried to defend themselves. The boy began to run and rearrange the confused ideas. Suddenly his stomach twitched at the idea that his whole family, the bandits, were at the mercy of a bunch of assholes as far as he could see. The first thought was of course for Alicia and his mother, but also turned to Travis. He’d been burying himself in his mind for some time now, it was automatic to think of them all as the core of his family, as only blood relatives once were. The family no longer consisted of those with whom one shared DNA, but with whom one shared his meager meals, battles against Walkers, against other people, against death… Nick made a half-resigned and half-desperate gesture. For a moment he thought he had to go to Y/N to tell her that Daryl was probably dead. He thought about how he would feel guilty about the thought. He loved Y/N just as he loved Alicia, his mother, and Travis, and as he thought about how he had committed himself to preventing any form of happiness, his guts tightened. The boy snorted and ran his hand over his tired face. He got up, threw his backpack over his shoulder and ran in the opposite direction of the kidnappers, heading for the ship.

You lowered the binoculars and threw it on the deck. It made a dull noise that angered you and you wished it hadn’t. You didn’t like being seen angry, it seemed to you that people looked at you like you were crazy when you got angry. Fortunately, Glenn and Maggie were in the cab to take care of Judith. She slept all day and Maggie was happy at first that Judith was asleep, but then she got used to waking up at night and waking everyone who slept only a few meters away with her vocal power. However, there was someone watching your scene. You turned as you heard a broken moan behind you and saw Judith at the threshold of the stairs below.

“Hey Judith…”, you smiled, got up and took the little girl on your arm. “Do you know there’s an excellent hot broth for you, fish, of course.” Judith, still pale and tired, cowered in your arms and began to play with your hair. “Daddy?”, she asked, looking around.

“I’ve already looked after him…”

You approached the balustrade again, glancing briefly at the trees that rose like a thick wall after a few meters of sandy shore. “What do you say, should I apologize?”

Judith didn’t bother to answer, instead she continued to play with your hair. You sighed. “You’re right, it’s my problem.”

You sat in silence for a moment and then picked up the child in front of you as if making an important speech. “It’s probably my fault, do you understand? I could handle things better, I didn’t know how to behave, but maybe that’s not a final apology, right? I don’t know how to act… Unless you’re considering what Nick’s up to and I’m not being honest with him or with myself. Do you understand?”

Judith’s face was so serious that you tried to persuade yourself she understood everything. Maybe she understood even more than the others had. Too bad that she wasn’t old enough to explain the theory of the universe and explain the meaning of life to them.

“I!”, the little girl screamed suddenly and leaned forward so that you were afraid to drop her. The girl turned to the bank and saw Nick running to one of the small boats that lay on the ground. He threw in a backpack and pushed the boat off. You looked up and saw him. He jumped on the boat and began rowing in your direction. You could see that hectic, tense expression on his face, the same he had when there were serious problems. “Nick!”

Judith’s scream made you react. You placed the child on the ground and ordered her to stay at a safe distance so that she had to sit on the deck, away from the balustrade. You leaned forward and ran your hands over the parapet. You were sure that Nick didn’t bring good news, you could only hope that they were the kind that could be solved. “Where are the others?”

“No idea!” When he reached the ship, the boy threw the backpack on board. This made a perfect landing and landed in the middle of the bridge. Then Nick grabbed the rope you had lowered and hauled himself onto the boat. In the meantime, Maggie and Glenn had left the cabin. “Are you all back?”, Maggie asked. The look of disappointment that came to her face when she saw Nick alone offended the boy.

“It’s just me.”, he repeated. He picked up the backpack from the floor and went down to the small kitchen they had available. “They have them, they come for the boat.”

“Who?”

Glenn and Maggie and you, holding Judith by the hand, followed. Meanwhile, Nick had taken some pills and split them into quarters. He put the pill in aluminum foil and then began pounding it with a meat tenderizer. “This group probably had Rick and the others and held them until we looked for them.”

“How did you escape?”, Maggie asked.

“I was left behind and I heard shots, so I hid myself and came back here.” The boy turned to you, put the piece of foil in his hand and pointed at Judith with a nod. “She should eat something, then give her that with water, it should do her good.”

Nick paused, his hands on his hips, and his gaze seemed lost. Moments passed before he returned. “They come for the boat, they have the rest of our group and they know how many we are and where we are.”

“So… what do we do?”, you asked in the round.

“Do you know how many there are?”, Glenn asked.

“No, but it may not be many, if they’ve been waiting to empty the boat before they attack, that means they don’t have enough men to fight us all, but with us as the rest, they can handle it…”

“Can be, and they know we’re four, plus a kid?”

“I don’t know, maybe they don’t know I’m here.”,Nick said, eyeing Judith.

“Then we will not involve Judith.”

You nibbled on your lower lip and thought feverishly. “They’re going to get on the boat, we can’t stop it, we need to be sure they will not hurt anyone and possibly not take our boat…”

Nick had a dark, sometimes disturbing look on his face. He met his eyes with none of those present and instead fastened himself on a spot of old blood on the ground.

“I have an idea, but we have to work fast.”


	16. Chapter 16

“Go!”

The man shoved his rifle between Daryl’s shoulder blades and he slid down a small slope on the wet ground, shaking his head and trying to stay clear, trying to remember that he had been through even worse situations. He had come out of more dangerous situations and would have come out of it again, it had been a week since he had hardly ever ate and at least ten hours he did not drink, he noticed his chapped lips and the pain in every part of his body. The group that had captured Rick and the rest had no qualms about beating them, especially after they understood Daryl could bring them back to the boat. The night before, her boss had sent one of his men to remotely check that everything was alright, but the man had come back and said that the boat was not left in place. Now one could say of all these men: They were bastards, they stank to death and seemed to retire to a subhuman level because of the apocalypse, as if the goal was to return to the barbarian era… But unfortunately they weren’t as dumb as it seems. They had already proven to be smart enough to trap them, and Daryl had become quite nervous. Was it possible that he, Rick, Michonne, would give up like Alicia? Perhaps they had felt so safe on their boat that they thought they were invulnerable, or simply stopped worrying about the world around them. Some pangs of conscience came over Daryl when he realized that he had been guided by his feelings at the time. He wouldn’t have noticed that a rival group followed them, even if they had appeared on the bridge and greeted them. He cursed himself for his stupidity and thought that if something happened to somebody, it would be his fault as well, no matter how things would turn out. He hadn’t paid attention and had lowered his guard…

“Your friends left you.”, the bandit boss had commented the night before. He was a small man, thin but strong. In the old world, he must have been someone insignificant, one of those who went unnoticed. The end of the world had produced its wisest, bestial side. In all honesty Daryl couldn’t accuse him. The man had checked their faces individually and ran like an undeniable judge in front of them, watching them closely. He moved his hands behind his back and made him look like an elegant man, with a little manners. He stopped in front of Carl and leaned over him.

“Do you think they’re gone?” The boy did not answer.

“No… You are not like that… You are honest and loyal people and those people don’t give up their friends… But don’t worry we will look for them ourselves and we will tell them…”

Occasionally the laughter followed from the rest of his group and Carl shot him a look that looked more annoyed than angry. The bandits had spied on them long enough to realize that Daryl was a bloodhound, and that they were tracking the boat. He had contradicted and said there was no sign of it, but one of the men had silenced him with a slap on the back of his head with his pistol. The pain had been superficial for a few hours, but shortly after they had started the return journey early in the morning, the pain in his head had brought him to the edge of despair. It was like a hammering migraine pulsing and broadcasting upwards. Daryl tried not to think about it, unfortunately that meant he was thinking of something else. The dilemma was profound: He didn’t know if he should relieve or care about Y/N. The bandit boss had left Rick and the rest of the group in a shop as a mound of misery, then caught the attention of the surrounding Walkers and lured them into a deadly trap. If they could free themselves, they had to find a way out, and that task was made quite difficult for them. At least they knew they were in danger. But Y/N, Glenn, Maggie and maybe even Nick had no idea what would happen to them… He didn’t know how they could react under fire. They would be dumbfounded and then they would first have to understand where the danger came from, then arm themselves and then quickly think about how to protect themselves. There were very few chances to get out of this fight. The boss of the bandits had been clever: He wanted to avoid the most dangerous conflict and he had succeeded. He would have no qualms about fighting four people and a child.

“So?”

They had reached the point where the boat had anchored in the last few days. Daryl looked around and saw clearly the signs of the passage of more people. He thought feverishly. There had to be something he could do. To warn the rest in some way before their arrival, to bring the boss and the other bandits to a dead end where they would find nothing and no one. The problem was that he didn’t know this vegetation in Mexico and he had no idea what was beyond the coast.

“Let’s do it…”, said a thick man in front of him, “…Every five minutes, until you find the damn boat, I’ll damn you to be in pain again, so let’s get started.”

The bandit’s fist came suddenly and so fast that Daryl was afraid his rib would break. He gasped and staggered backwards until he fell to the ground. He lay there breathing heavily, trying to move as little as possible to avoid further pain. The man who hit him leaned over him. “Five minutes.”

Daryl coughed and a drop of saliva slipped over his chin. He cleaned it with his forearm and decided it was better to stand up and try to survive for now without a rib piercing his lungs… It was the best plan he had right now. On the way to the ship, Daryl received two more heavy kicks, one in his side, one in his face and a slap, before he saw the boat in the distance. The leader lifted him off the floor and patted his shoulder.

“Congratulations, you have done your duty little Redneck!”

He gestured to some men to move and one of them to keep an eye on Daryl. The group began to move unobtrusively to the boat. Daryl tried to understand why the rest of his group was there. Why did they move the boat? Has something already happened? It anchored in a river bend, closer to the shore than necessary. They could get stuck in the ground too easily and could also be reached from the countryside. If only someone had taken planks long enough and fastened them on the deck, he would have created a perfect walkway for climbing. A few gnarled river trees spread their branches over the boat, creating a kind of shade against the sun. He imagined sitting on the bridge and sitting in the shade of a beech. Daryl couldn’t believe that they had covered this path by kilometers only for a bit of shade… One of the bandits had a long, thick black beard, and he sat down beside him and pointed his gun at him. Daryl looked at him with hatred, then sat up to survey the boat. He could see four figures on the bridge. Two of them were sitting cross-legged, a third person stood at the balustrade and peered across the other side of the river - the wrong shore, in silence and without being armed, while the last person sat in a chair, not far away, with stretched forward legs and crossed feet on the balustrade, apparently busy talking to the other person. Daryl could swear that it was Nick. This pose was soft, hands crossed behind the neck. In quick succession four shots made him jump. Daryl looked at the bandits. Two of them had their rifles pointed at the figures and at that moment they rose from their crouched position and giggled contentedly. He looked back at the boat and saw the four figures collapsing where they were. Two of them lay dead on the bridge. The one person in the chair was now below the balustrade and the other person, probably Y/N, was leaning against the metal bars, legs bent at a strange angle. Daryl didn’t even have time to scream, to be shocked, he didn’t even get angry. A too-known pain exploded in his chest, closing his throat and stopping him at that moment. He felt it differently than at previous times. When Merle died, or Beth, it was the same kind of pain that had entered him. But the intensity stuns him this time. It was as if the world was cut off… He felt the damp grass under his fingers and a worm that returned to the earth under his palm, but he didn’t really notice.

“Stand on asshole, you have to do the honors.”

Two arms pulled him to his feet and Daryl didn’t rebel for the first time in his life. He got up and found that his legs were still working. His whole body worked, he was alive and he was there. But at what price? Maybe it would have been better if he hadn’t had to move his legs, which felt so heavy. Maybe it would have been better if he hadn’t seen the faces of the men laughing at the conquest. A strong push sent him forward, his wrists still bound and bleeding, his arms dangling before him, a lump in his throat that showed no signs of release and a dull ache in his chest. At that moment, he realized that Y/N was dead. And that he loved her.

Nick glanced at you, but you didn’t notice. He remained silent, tied another rope and secured the knot, as his grandfather had taught him as a child. His grandfather liked to fish, he took Alicia and him to the lake often, leaving the girl to his grandmother as he took Nick to the shore and taught him all the little tricks of fishing. He didn’t even remember half when his grandparents brought him home, but he was happy after such days. Some advice from Madison’s father, however, was not completely useless. He knew how to tie knots that were very hard to rebuild.

“Let’s see how long it lasts.” You took one end of the net and spread it over the bridge. Nick, on the other hand, did the same.

“It should be okay.”

You didn’t look at his face and actually avoided looking at him. Nick had noticed it the day before, but there was no time to stop and talk. You had to act fast. Glenn and Maggie were still there, leaving the child with them. Organizing with Judith to keep an eye on them was even more complicated. But the attack was imminent and the preparations were almost completed.

“All right, let’s prepare it on the tree and wait for Glenn and Maggie to come back in. Then we’ll attach the last ropes.”

“And then let us wait.”

“Exactly, then we will wait.” The boy began to fasten the net in the middle of the bridge and tighten the string. When he was close enough to you because he couldn’t escape without being rude, he said: “Because of the other day… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way.” He sighed, got up and put his hands on his hips. You still didn’t look at him.

“You have to do what you think is right for what you want, Y/N…”

“It’s not just about me.”, you sighed and ran a hand over your forehead to wipe away the drops of perspiration that had formed. “I should have thought of you too, I was selfish, it’s true.”

“Y/N -…”

“No, Nick, it’s like that.” Finally you turned to look at him. “I met Daryl back then… I don’t know… Maybe it would be better to wait.”

“Don’t be an idiot, it would be stupid of you, wait for what, wait for who?” Nick shook his head. “You did what your instinct told you.”

“And I didn’t use my brain, the most important thing.”

“It’s the survival instinct that brought us here, not reason, things happen, we make a decision, but let’s make it quick, that’s what the instinct is for, and I listen to you.” The boy reached out and stopped you, who threatened to turn and stop the conversation. “I have no right to tell you what to do, excuse me if I thought I had it, in my defense I can only say I was afraid that things would change between us.”

“It could…”, Nick grinned. “You’ve already decided in your mind, you’re acting like that and you’re calling reasons as if you’d already made the decision, it’s your instinct that tells you what to do.”

“And what about you?”, you whispered.

“I need you. No matter how. Even if it’s just friendship.”

For the first time in a while you showed a smile and you both knew it was a sincere smile. Nick and you hugged and that was like the first time you met.

They captured Daryl first. They still didn’t completely trust the group around Rick Grimes, but they had to take their precautions. One of the bandits had been watching the prisoner the whole time. The plan now was to explain to oneself how to set the ship in motion. Daryl, with his hands bound and his morale at a low, but if he followed his morale, he would have saved himself, but in the end it was more important to protect the others of his group. The bandits knew well that no loss, no physical pain, was enough when it came to survival. If they threw Daryl off this boat, he would somehow manage. The boss didn’t want to kill him, after all, he was not a cruel man… They had killed his friends because he didn’t want to do any harm. If they had attacked as well, those four would have defended themselves. They would have been in the majority; It was like finding a half squashed insect lying on the ground, shaking its hectic legs. Killing him is the only act of piety they can do, just like the four on the boat: A charity action. As long as they weren’t with Daryl, he did not even start to rebel. He was still in a kind of mental limbo, a place where everything seemed muted. When he was on the bridge, a few meters from his friends, he wished he had done it. He didn’t have the guts to look at the bodies, he didn’t want to see them dead. To see them would mean that everything is real and would bring their disappearance to a more concrete level. It would drive him crazy. Yet he couldn’t think of anything else but Y/N’s face was smeared with blood, the bullet hole in the middle of the head that disfigured her features, and the blank expression. He clenched his fists and tried to distance himself from this image in his mind, but the more he tried to suppress it, the clearer it became in his head. New details appeared, his mouth half open, like the shadow of a slight smile. His fingers tightened and Daryl dried his mouth in fear. When the bandits reached him on the deck like pirates rode up to attack a ship, Daryl looked everywhere except the corpses. There was a light breeze that moved the leaves of the trees. Their shadow formed moving drawings on the boat and the sound they produced had something harmonious about them. Daryl was sure he wouldn’t forget that moment, never in his life. The moment when he could hear his soul break and he ran to his heart to divide it in two.

“Hey, what the damn hell…” One of the men had raised the next corpse to throw it into the water, only to find that it was already in an advanced state of decay. He turned it over to the side and it revealed the swollen, gray face of a Walker.

“What’s this bullshit!” The bandit boss approached Daryl and hit him. “Where’s the fucking rest?”

The man looked around confused, it was clear that not even he understood what was happening. He felt something fall on him and instinctively crouch, only to find that it was a thick fishing net. He looked around, heard the men screaming and out of the corner of his eye he saw them wriggling on the spot, with the result that they became even more entangled in the net.

“Stop!” The boss’s voice overwhelmed the other bandits and almost all the men fell silent. Daryl saw that they were trapped under a net that covered the entire length of the bridge. Ropes dangling from the lower branches of the trees above made it clear that they had landed in a trap, but whoses? The man raised his arms and cursed the bandits who had tied his wrists together. He moved by pushing his body into the center of the bridge and began to search for a way to at least free his hands. His eyes were caught by a quick movement. Just in time to see a rope fall, lazily, as if it had been cut at that moment. Daryl saw the door leading under the deck open flat and shortly afterwards followed on the other side from the captain’s door. Someone had opened it from a distance and soon it was clear why. The terrible sounds of the Walkers reached the ears of the now captive, the small herd was soon in sight and trotted towards them. The perfect prey: Unable to move, they offered their meat through the holes in the net. The bandits had already begun to cut the net, but it was thick and it took some time to create even one hole wide enough to pass. Daryl soon heard the first, painful scream of a bandit bitten by a Walker and almost panicked. He had to find a way out. He looked at the man at his side, who was desperately cutting the net.

“Hey!”, he called back. He turned and gave him a look. For a second he was stunned and saw only a plethora of white dots in front of his eyes. The screams became more intense. He shook his head and had to stay clear. Daryl threw himself to the ground and took the knife the man had dropped. He began to sever the ropes that held his wrists together and almost cheered when he saw that they quickly frayed. They were old and worn ropes.

“Daryl!”

A scream startled him. He stopped and looked up, but saw nothing. Around him, the bandits moved, shoved him, shouting orders and curses. The man was thrown around for a few moments before he realized he knew that voice.

“Y/N?”

Suddenly he saw from the corner of his eye, arms and ropes on the shore. You had run to the water, taking only two steps to soak your shoes and ankles. Behind you, with a hallucinated and frightened look, appeared Nick and Glenn. The knife fell from Daryl’s hand and he didn’t even notice it. Barely able to discern from the men who died near him, he couldn’t help but lick his lips with a pale smile.

“Daryl!”

Your scream was one of the few things he still heard clearly. But now, he could die, knowing that you were alive.


	17. Chapter 17

You ran without hesitation and reached the boat in a few moments. Nick was behind you and followed you.

“Y/N! Y/N wait!”

The boy joined you, you were already climbing onto the ship with one of the ropes dangling from the sides of the boat. Nick clung to your ankles and pulled you down with all the strength he had. You dropped into the water and gasped. When you recovered, you fixed Nick’s gaze. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Follow me, okay?”, Nick said. So you nodded and you both swam to the side where the captain’s cabin was and from there you began to climb. Glenn had cut through the ropes that kept the doors locked and the smell of living prey needed to be enough to free them all. Nick imagined that they had gathered in the middle of the bridge, where there was the juiciest meal. The plan was great, if Daryl hadn’t been on board, you would just have to wait for the Walkers to feast and then conquer the boat again. But how could you foresee that they would take Daryl with them? Surely they had to figure out how to maneuver the boat, or maybe it was a negotiation game. Nick went up first and unhooked a knife from his belt as he approached the center of the ship. The swarming mass of Walkers stood there and none of them had noticed you as the newcomers. The boy craned his neck to look at the driver’s door. It wasn’t far, the living dead were only a meter away, but it shouldn’t be a problem. He turned to look for you and saw that you had just climbed onto the boat. “Let’s take a Walker and disappear in the cabin.”

With the knife in your hand, you jumped forward and killed the next Walker, who had noticed your presence and began to growl in your direction. The body collapsed on you and you almost fell to the ground under his weight. You dragged him to the door, while Nick faced the other living dead, who now turned to you and tried to bite. He killed a few of them, but meanwhile the herd had turned and everyone’s attention turned to the new loot. As soon as you dragged the corpse into the cabin, the boy backed away and closed the door immediately. You already opened the Walker with your knife and smeared your face, your clothes and the rest of your body.

“Do you think that our wet clothes make us more noticeable?”

“They shouldn’t, but it is abundant.”

Nick put his hands in the guts of the corpse and smeared the foul-smelling porridge of rotten organs on your back. The same thing you did for him. You didn’t even have the time to turn your nostrils or stop your breath because of the smell, so you worked fast and your minds were elsewhere.

“Do you think he’s still alive?”, you asked suddenly.

“I don’t know.” In those moments, Nick couldn’t lie, he really didn’t know, the times when he got into trouble, where he had done too much, he was honest with his parents’ recklessness, with Alicia and then with Travis. That was kinda a similar situation, Daryl would have been able to die, you both knew it, and he knew that you didn’t want to hear any lies. “It could be…”

You took a deep breath. “Let’s search for him.”With these words, you quietly opened the door and looked at the Walkers, which piled up in front of the cabin. A few of them entered the room, looking confused yet hopeful. You didn’t resist when they hit you and you let them slide in one by one, while you’re reaching the exit. Behind you, you heard Nick doing the same. You turned and exchanged a look with the boy. He made a slow gesture to make it clear that you would stay on this side of the boat; He would go around checking to see if Daryl was still alive on the other side. Nick nodded briefly and moved slowly around the deck, his arms dangling and his feet shuffling across the floor. For a moment, the boy imagined what he would do when he would see Daryl already dead. Or worse, he had found him alive but infected. What would he have said to you? The boy hobbled on, hoping with all his might that Daryl was alive and well. The gang of bandits had protected him until then. They had given Daryl a chance before he had freed himself from the ropes that held his wrists, and then gained time. The blood gushing from the bitten ones seemed to attract the Walkers even more. A bit pathetic: Constantly divided between the desire to jump on the corpse, already half dead and yet fresh, or on a new prey that is still alive. If he hadn’t been in the midst of this dilemma, Daryl might even have laughed. At his side, at the end of his life, one of the men fell to his knees and looked up at him. The big, watery eyes, the bloody hands, the wound… A bite, even more than one. His guts unrolled his arms and hung down on him.

“Please…”, he murmured with drops of blood dripping from his chin to the ground. Amid all this chaos of screaming and growling, Daryl stopped for a moment to look at him. Without hesitation, he killed him by slamming the knife through his eyes. Before he fell to the ground, Daryl grabbed the man who was now dead and pulled him up. He looked around, lifting his body up and laying it on his back, as if he were a friend too drunk to go home. The most ropes from the net were cut through and there were now wide openings from which one could escape. Too bad that the escape route was prevented by the living dead. Daryl squatted on the floor, the dead man’s arms dangling over his shoulders, he felt hot blood flood over his back and noticed the metallic smell. Daryl began to crawl slowly without attracting attention. But none of the surviving bandits took care of him, they were too busy saving their own lives. A growl made him jump with the risk of getting stuck. A Walker had jumped over him on the dead, eating one arm. Daryl reached for the knife and killed it when he had the Walker’s head close enough. Within moments, he had to do the same thing with two other Walkers. He wondered how long the human blanket would last until it was completely consumed. The idea was not bad at first. It wasn’t really risky to be bitten because the corpse attracted the attention of the Walkers and they didn’t recognize the difference between Daryl and the body. They didn’t understand that there was still a juicy meal under their food and they didn’t care that the food moved a bit and slowly crawled across the bridge. The only mistake was that it attracted an endless amount of Walkers. For a moment, Daryl thought he was going to die. The weight of the living dead had become too heavy to sustain. The body of the man he had killed had almost completely disappeared between their pines and they weighed like stones on his back. His shoulders ached and his knees seemed pierced by long, thick needles. Farther away from the middle of the bridge, the Walkers moved away. Daryl felt the weight on his back loosen and when he realized that the living dead were getting less and less over him, he forced himself and got up. But some of them were still with him… His sudden movement had made them turn back. As soon as they appeared, they let go of the stiff corpse and, growling, approached his face, its mouth stained with fresh blood. Daryl thought that they wanted to treat it as a kind of unexpected reward, as if a piece of fresh leg suddenly rose in the middle of the corpses and began to float on the surface. He backed away and his back slammed against the formwork of the boat. The living dead approached him. He counted several times to calculate their distance and added a few more Walkers. The man cursed and pressed his right hand on the knife. He felt the grip that was slippery with blood under his fingers. Without thinking too much, he lunged at the Walkers. He immediately killed one with a precise punch in the head. He killed the other one in quick succession. Daryl needed a plan, he had to reach the stairs that led below deck and had to break through, but quickly. And he felt that his forces left him. The living dead surrounded him. Everywhere he looked, he saw only lazy, rotting faces staring at him. They almost seemed to want to tell him that it was over, that he should surrender.

’Why fight again? Drop your weapons Daryl Dixon, stop fighting. It is too hard…’

The next Walker fell at his feet and he found his thoughts back. He was increasingly trapped.

’You have done enough, don’t you think? Wouldn’t you want to rest? Come to us.’

Daryl’s breathing became heavy, his movements slower. He didn’t seem to go anywhere.

’You are so tired, Daryl Dixon. Come and rest with us. Here we rest, we are not alone here…’

His thoughts were disjointed and confused. Daryl raised his arm again and felt increasingly weaker. He shook his head and slapped himself. He had to stay awake! He had to fight the Walkers and kill them once and for all. Instinctively he moved against the Walker in front of him, but when he was about to drop the blade he stopped.

“Nick…”, he murmured in an incomprehensible gasp. The boy looked up and Daryl saw his eyes. A stab in the heart made him jump, but he was relieved. He met Nick’s eyes and read a silent statement. The boy gently raised his hands and Daryl could see that they were full of guts. He approached Daryl, paralyzed with horror, with that clear step that resembled that of all the other living dead. For a moment, the man wondered if Nick wasn’t a hallucination. Should he kill him? Was it Nick? Was he really alive, or was he just imagining it? Before he could think of anything else, the boy joined him, his arms full of offal and smeared him with it. Daryl realized what he was doing when he saw that the Walkers around him were slowing down, as if they were confused. He took some guts and began to spread the stinking blood on his arms and face, then on his legs. Nick saved him…

“Let’s go.”, the boy whispered, knowing that Daryl was covered enough to move among the living dead. He turned and hobbled to the balustrade. The man in tow moved cautiously, not yet sure he had just escaped. As they left, Daryl stared at the boy’s back. In spite of himself, he felt a deep sense of gratitude towards him. The sound of a door averted the man from his reflections. Nick was now on the shore, only a few feet away, but he stopped near the boat. You reappeared carrying a small anomalous wave and you enthusiastically swam towards Daryl and reached him in a few steps.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Your hair lay flat on your head, your eyes dark with tiredness and your expression worried. You clung to his face as if you could understand that he was okay now. Daryl pushed your hands away, but held one in his. “I’m fine. Gotta be.”

“We had no idea… I mean, if we’d known they’d brought you here, we would never have done that.”

“It was a good plan and you didn’t know that.”

“Where are the others from our group?”

“We have to get them, they left them in a difficult situation, so they can’t be released…”

He let go of your hand and started to swim to the shore. There Nick tried to dry himself as best as possible, while Glenn was gone and looking for Maggie and Judith.

“Wait, Daryl.” You approached him and clung to his back in a happy state and smiled.

“I’m so damn glad you’re back.”

You stood in front of him, stretched your neck and put a light kiss on his lips. Daryl closed his eyes and it was a moment before he opened them again. When he opened it, you smiled. The man couldn’t help but glimpse to Nick on the shore and you seemed to understand his thoughts.

“I’m sorry if I let you wait, I must have been an idiot.”, you mumbled.

“And I almost died, because I chose…” Daryl stroked your hand, as if unwilling to admit that he was capable of such a loving gesture. You fell into the water and, still smiling, started to swim again…

Michonne was worried that the boat would be damaged by all the ill-treatment they had to endure, especially the wood of the bridge, which had been flooded with blood for the second time… Travis reassured her by telling her that there is no danger that the wood would withstand water and moisture. Considering that you were getting closer to the Gulf of Mexico and the weather was changing, Travis would have been amazed that the boats plying these waters weren’t protected from moisture by any means available. Apart from being on a river, you were in the middle of a lush area with a tropical climate. Nick was glad you were elsewhere than the Mexican desert. He only aroused bad memories and bad ideas for survival. When you met with Glenn and Maggie, you searched for the others in the group, led by Daryl, who found the road without any problems. You found the others in trouble, but not on the brink of death. It was handled by Rick ‘cause he didn’t gave up. They had managed to free themselves and they slowly killed off all Walkers that were hot on their heels. As you all reunited you helped them finish the job… It was almost a slap in the face for Carl when he saw what the ship looked like. The Walkers roamed everywhere less than a hundred yards away. “We have to clean another time!”, he shouted in the voice of a forced laborer. Carol bent her lips into a smile and patted his shoulder. “Life is tough, isn’t it?” The boy, along with Alicia and Travis, complained all the time. When Madison noticed that they were moving away from each other, she parted ways. She left Carl standing on the bridge, sending Nick under the deck and Travis into the cab. That’s how they worked better. Everyone wanted to leave quickly. You had stayed too long and too many dangerous things had happened, this was no place to live. Nick looked up from the dirty wall he was rubbing when he heard a noise behind him. He averted his eyes and scratched the back of his head without saying a word. Daryl, just below, looked at the wall the boy was working on. A long strip of blood covered most of the wall. It made him think of one of those expensive paintings that was once sold as art to the rich. Color scales that were arbitrarily thrown on the canvas. Daryl had never liked these things and the stain of dried blood on the wall was no exception. He took a sponge out of the bucket in the middle of the corridor, sat next to Nick and worked silently for a while. Daryl felt he had to say something. He hadn’t had really a chance to talk to you yet, but it was necessary instead of not understanding what you wanted to tell him. Now that he was calmer, he could see you from Nick’s point of view, and he felt uncomfortable, as if he had to apologize. In a sense, he had betrayed you while he fought in the vegetation for survival. From this perspective, he felt sorry for Nick and understood why he was mad at you. He just thought that it had to be okay, as he had occurred in the end. He blamed himself for treating him.

“Hey.”

Daryl turned around. He still wasn’t a speaker. He would never have expressed those thoughts in words. Somehow he trusted Nick enough to understand him. Luckily, the boy had been waiting for him and caught his attention.

“You thought I left you there, right?”

The man remained silent. He watched the boy and he waited for his answer as if it was important. Half leaning against the wall, the mushy sponge dripped onto his jeans and he didn’t even notice. But now he moved his knee to the right and left and looked at him with his chin up, as if he weighed it.

“I would never let anyone die intentionally, I’m not like that.”, Nick said, returning to his work. Daryl still didn’t answer and instead went to wash the towel. He dipped it in and squeezed all the blood out of the fabric. “I know, but I didn’t think about it, I thought you were a Walker.”

“That’s why you had that look on your face when I found you, you’ve thought I wasted all my beauty with death!”, the boy said with a thin grin on his lips. He preferred conversations with lighter tones.

“I couldn’t be killed by an idiot. Not even an idiot who’s already a fucking Walker.”, Daryl said and came to his side and began to wipe the wall again, completely ignoring the amused look, followed by a crooked smile Nick gave him, but he noticed it. Daryl understood that they obviously wouldn’t understand each other because of you, it’s difficult to bury the hatchet, especially if it was levied on a woman against another person, but respect and friendship are two very different things and Daryl knew that Nick was a person he could show respect for, he was one of them, he had been through a lot and he was one of the few who survived, probably even easier since the whole apocalypse began. It isn’t easy to face certain things and become a righteous person. It was easier to become a bad, cruel creature, to become a monster. In some ways he reminded him of himself and he was a bit pleased to find that similarity. Daryl and Nick were proof that if each of them met each other, it would be still possible to get along. He understood how he felt. There had been the damn end of the world to make it useful to the rest of society to find their place in the apocalypse. He humbled himself on one side, but he was happy to be there with those people right now. He was sure that Nick felt the same. Mutual respect has arisen between them on this day. Another affection, more complex and confused and probably even difficult for them to understand. But deeply rooted.

The sea presented itself as a surprise. The first person to see it was Rick. He was the only one who was awake and in a few hours his shift would be over. He would have woken Glenn at dawn, but for the moment he was alone in the commander’s cabin, at the wheel. As the river dissolved in the sea, Rick stopped the boat and waited a few moments. The boat’s engine stopped roaring and everything stopped. At first he was annoyed by the silence that filled his ears, then he recognized the sounds that surrounded him. He listened to the lapping of the waves on the beach, the chirping grasshoppers and the nocturnal animals crawling in the undergrowth, as well as the light breeze. He was sure he would hear another noise, like a slow sigh in the distance, a sound that seemed to come from the deepest part of the earth, and at that moment, he was sure he was listening to the ocean. Rick was sure. They had arrived. He had arrived. Something melted in his chest at that moment. It wasn’t like when they reached the Greene’s farm, seized the prison, or arrived in Alexandria. He knew what these places had given him but it had nothing to do with what he felt now. Each time they reached a safe place, or at least a place as such, it was like waiting for something from these places. He saw it as a lifeline, imagined the future there with his family. They had fought so hard to find each of these places, they had sacrificed a lot and now it just had to pay off. But what could you expect from the sea? An unexpected relief came over him. There were no safe places. He wouldn’t have looked for them. Was there no future? He had lived in the present… Didn’t they have food, water, shelter and security? If they were alive to miss this, it meant that they were still alive to get it. That didn’t mean he’d given up that he wouldn’t fight to keep his family together. He understood that what he had won on this journey to the sea wasn’t resignation, but acceptance. He finally accepted life, this life. The life of this destiny had forced him to his knees. He accepted it instead of fighting it, instead protecting his family from regretting the past, he loved them because it was her life. Together. Rick took a deep breath and was satisfied. He went downstairs and entered his son’s room. “Carl, Carl wake up.” The boy focused on his figure and immediately put his hand behind the pillow and pulled out a pistol. “What’s wrong?”, he mumbled sleepily and sat up.

“Nothing, everything is fine.” The former sheriff lowered the weapon and took it from Carl’s hands. “Come on, you have to look at something.”The ship moved slowly, dragged by the currents of the river, which mingled with those of the sea. They reached a relatively quiet spot and sailed south. Rick let the small ship continue alone and sat down next to Carl. Everyone else in the group was asleep, nature itself seemed slower. They watched the sunrise in silence. Intense orange colored the sea and the reflection on the waves in continuous motion appeared like a melancholy dance. When it was all over, the spell slowly dissolved, almost unnoticed. Carl turned and looked at his father.

“Go to sleep Dad, I’ll take the rest of your shift.”

“I’ll get Glenn…”

The boy shook his head. “You don’t have to wake him up.”

“Okay then…” Rick got up and clapped Carl on the shoulder, then stepped out of the cab and headed to his own cabin…


	18. Chapter 18

You all had sailed for a day and a half, not far from the coast, which was within sight but at a safe distance. Suddenly you had discovered a tiny Cordillera that came up behind the waves. It offered perfect protection. You had dropped the anchor and put it there. “To take stock.”, Rick had said. Carl tried to climb some rocks, followed by Alicia and Daryl. Most of it was in contact with the water and covered with slippery moss, it was almost impossible to get a firm hold and while climbing Alicia was afraid to break her neck. To die for falling during the Apocalypse would have been awkward. A legend they would tell other survivors in later years… “There’s a lot to eat here.”Carl said, watching as the shell colonies appeared in the waves and disappeared again. He moved his feet and jumped higher as a crab passed. She was as tall as his two fists. Alicia followed his movements and could not help but smile. “The cliffs attract many animals, there are algae and moss, so there are shells and mollusks feeding on them.”  
“And so are those who feed on mollusks. Crustaceans and fish of all kinds. That must be a perfect place to fish.” Not far away, Daryl tried to measure the distance between the rocks and the shore. It was too far for anyone to attempt an attack, or to storm the ship suddenly. The only problem was that on the boat it was difficult to defend, react to a fire, or plan a counterattack. On the boat, Nick stared at the rocks as if they were men who had insulted him. He approached Rick. “We should find a place near the coast where we can hide the ship, we can not stay here forever.”The former sheriff turned and looked at him. “Why not?”  
“We’ve always been on the move and near the coast, but if we want to stop, we have to find a shed or something.” The boy pointed to the rocks. “These rocks, if there were rough seas, would destroy the boat, and we would end up being driven to them by the wind.”  
Michonne, who had listened to the conversation, approached. “It’s not a bad idea to find a safe place in addition.”  
“I thought the base was in the boat?”, Rick asked slightly annoyed. “Yes, but we have to move on, if we have to stop for a while, we need to find a place to secure the ship in. As soon as we see storm clouds on the horizon, we have to do the same, we can not risk it to be damaged or stolen.”  
“Nick is right.”  
“We’ll have to get out, we’ll have to find things for Judith and we’re always lacking on medication, Maggie still has to regain her energies, maybe vitamins could help.”  
“The ammo will eventually go out and Daryl will not find his arrows in the middle of the sea.”  
Rick snorted. “And Carl… Let me just say the word: Books.”, grinned the man, then his face relaxed to a even more relaxed smile and he laughed a little. “Books… The living dead walk around, it’s the end of the world, the apocalypse… And my son wants a book.”  
Michonne smiled with him and hugged him lovingly. “Then we are lucky…”  
Nick had followed the exchange silently with a slight frown. “Let’s decide how many more days and then we’ll go.”  
“A few weeks.”, Rick said quickly. “If we don’t find anything, we will go anyway and we will continue to travel to try again.” The boy nodded. “Good.” You dropped a lifeboat and Judith stayed on board with Madison and Glenn and Maggie. After a few hours, Carl suggested that he’ll enter a building facing the sea. You discovered that it was an office, a kind of reception. The only positive indication you found in it was a snack machine that you had plundered after Rick and Travis had broken the glass with a pickaxe. Meanwhile Carol walked around the building with a gun in her hand and a knife in her belt. At one point, the woman saw that the hut was half on the beach, while the other half was directly in the water. It probably stood on a scaffolding, because at regular intervals the big trunks under the structure of the building began to end below sea level. A narrow corridor surrounded the building and allowed access to the rear. Carol looked around and saw that the others were now far away, studying other little things. She put the gun in her holster and pulled out her knife. She walked cautiously over the catwalk and, before she reached the corner of the structure, hit her with the heel against the wall and waited. No noise. The woman walked on and as she turned the corner, she was relieved that there wasn’t a single Walker here. Instead of going straight, the wall stayed in place and the sidewalk disappeared into a boathouse. Suddenly Carl appeared behind her, as excited as she was. It had to be a place to rent motorboats and jet skis. The owners made the documentation inside and then brought the customers back to take them out to sea. Looking at the discovery, Carl stepped forward and turned the corner. He entered the shed with a big smile while Carol disappeared. The breath of a Walker struck him just before his teeth snapped at him. Carl raised his knife in defense and backed away. He had no time to do anything when he felt the emptiness under his feet and fell into the water. Large bubbles floated up to reach and burst the surface. Carl, his ears muffled by the water, instinctively moved away and squeezed his hand to look for the knife, but realized at that moment that he had lost it. His head came back over the water and the boy breathed in suffocating, coughed again and saw the Walker a few inches away from him. He curled up and thrust both feet against the dead man’s chest. The boy took a deep breath, only calmer. The Walker didn’t seem to be able to swim normally. Leaving him behind, Carl swam toward the inside of the garage and found with relief that no other Walker was waiting for him. Despite the dim light, the sunlight lit up the room enough. He saw that the catwalk continued along the perimeter of the garage, forming a U, and probably circling the building further. He climbed back up with his arms and looked around. Inside he saw a green plastic tarp attached to the entrance with ropes. It would have been perfect to hide. The only moored boats were a shabby pedal boat with a small integrated slide and a watercraft. Carl wiped his hair out of his face and left the shed. He didn’t even bother about the Walker who passed by and the one who was still in the water growled in his direction. The sun went down and painted the horizon to an intense orange. Carl sat on the roof of the shed, admiring the sunset on the same day was a privilege. He thought the apocalypse might make sense… The boy put the book in his hands and swung his legs back into the room. He noticed that he had a faint smile on his face and for the first time since he was a child, when he and his mother fled with Shane from their homes, he realized that he was happy. Really happy. It wasn’t the relief of happiness when someone from the group returned safely from a mission, nor the little, comforting happiness of being with his sister Judith and he realized that he was getting older and was healthy and strong. He recognized the pale happiness of reading the books he talked to along with Travis and Y/N. That was his true happiness. He already knew that he loved his whole family, but at that moment he felt it. He loved them with all his heart and he knew it would be reciprocated. How could he not be happy under these conditions? “Hey, can I sit down?” Carl whirled around and saw Alicia walking toward him in light steps. “I’m a bad survivor.”, she said with a half smile and looked back to the horizon. “Well, I couldn’t hear you at all.”, said Carl and she sat down next to him. “You can still feel good, Glenn and your father stand guard on one side and the others on the opposite side, so if someome came to attack us, they’d be able to see them a mile away.” They two remained silent for a while. “Tomorrow we will look for useful things, will you come along?”, the boy asked.  
“I think so, are you looking for something specific?”  
“No, not really, and you?”  
Alicia shrugged. “I’d like to look for some of those cookbooks and maybe some spices, you know, the fish becomes almost indigestible after a while.”  
“I noticed.”, Carl chuckled and took off his father’s hat.  
“Where did you get the hat?” The girl reached out and, after a silent request, took the hat from his hands.  
“He belonged to my father.”  
“Really? Was he a cop?”  
“He was a sheriff…” Alicia whistled and tried on the hat. Carl’s lips tightened. He knew there was an age gap between them and that it wasn’t an illusion, but he could not help but think she was pretty. He blushed at the thought and when Alicia returned his hat, he took it without saying anything. He was relieved to hear someone climb the ladder he had placed on the side of the building and turned to see Nick’s head.  
“Alicia, Travis and Mom were looking for you.” He looked around and then decided to join them. “Dinner will be ready soon.” He watched the view and smiled because he had to squint slightly at the sun. “You have found a nice place.”  
“Carl found it.”  
“A perfect place to flirt.”, Nick added with a grin, slapping Carl on the back of the hand with the back of his hand. Carl was seriously thinking about jumping into the sea. Fortunately, the intense color of the setting sun prevented the Nick and Alicia from realizing how flushed he was. Alicia understood that the boy was ashamed and she pushed her brother away. She liked Carl, it was like having a younger brother to take care of. A fourth person came to the roof. You frowned as you saw the others. “What are you doing, Carl?”  
“Not much, I’ve read.”, Carl said, pointing to the book. He was grateful for the arrival of you, the only person who didn’t cause him trouble, if only unconsciously or intentionally, but never meant to be angry. “And what are you recommending Travis this time?” You came over and reached for the book. “This is definitely easy to read, so I have no doubt.” Nick eyed the title. “Yes, Travis is not the best if you just want to spend half an hour in joy.”  
“Yeah… But he always comes home.”, Alicia sighed.  
“This is true.” You all were silent for a while watching the sunset, each of you lost in thought. You felt united, as part of a family. It was not everyone’s job to grow up during the Apocalypse and to tell it proudly. Not for Walkers or other people, like bandits or plunderers. The brutal world has changed all of them and you knew it very well. You had all done something and said things that you regretted, that you weren’t proud of or even ashamed of today. You had done things for which you would pay dearly one day. All four of you had held out, you had grown up in this world, you had gotten older before you had to, but in the end you were there. You were alive and you were good people. Or at least you tried to be. And basically it was important, Nick told himself. “Let’s go.” Alicia got up and headed for the ladder. “If there’s one thing Mom is still mad about, it’s when we don’t get to the table in time.”

Daryl stared at the rope with a knot in his throat, realizing that he had nothing else to do. He looked around and couldn’t see much of the garage in the dark. The whole room was now occupied by the ship, and the dark green, waxed canvas had been pulled down to conceal it. The only light came from a crack left by the cloth over the surface of the water. Although they tried to keep it out, the moon crept in through thin white lines of light. He was the only person on the bridge, the others were already in bed, except for Michonne and Carol, who were on guard. By now he slept in a sleeping bag in the captain’s cabin, but somehow this day had been different from the others, though no one could say why. He had to make a decision. Or rather, he had already made a decision, but as always, when it was time to get to the point, he was afraid of that moment. The man ran his hand behind his neck through his hair and snorted. He went downstairs and tried not to make a noise. The splashing of the water was barely noticeable as he came down the stairs and the creaking and other noise of the boat was muffled. Several days had passed since you and Nick rescued him from the Walkers and the bandits on the same boat, and since then he has sealed himself off at a safe distance from them. He couldn’t say why, but now that he was alone, he could think about it. It was the same reason he initially stayed away from you. That situation startled him… Daryl was sure that it would make him vulnerable, that it would worry him too much in a world where worrying meant nothing but death. It would have been easier to ignore these feelings if you were the first person to refuse his attention or if Nick got in the way. But now that you had greeted him, he realized he wanted to be with you. “Fuck.” Daryl ran two fingers over his eyes and stopped at the beginning of the narrow corridor that led to the cabins. How much he wanted to smoke a cigarette in this situation… He noticed with dismay that he was in this sense like Merle. That bastard never left him, and even when he was dead, he was still there to show him the mistakes of his life as a clear example of the way he shouldn’t follow. He had never completed anything, just like his brother. Probably the only idea was to get involved in something more than a sincere friendship or just sex. The connection he had with Merle had been dictated by the blood and the years, and yet he had to admit that he hadn’t been the best brother in the world. But Y/N? He chose you. In his mind already as a definite choice for life. This strange life in which you all lived. He finally wanted to finish something… But Daryl was afraid of making mistakes. A fear that had decreased so much over the years.  
“So it’s official.” Daryl turned and saw Nick coming out of the kitchen. “What?”, he asked more for enlightenment than out of curiosity. “You and Y/N.” The boy leaned against the wall behind him and crossed his arms. A pinch of ancient rage surprised Daryl. He had to take care of this boy, or his opportunity to be with the woman he loved would fail. This thought hit him like a slap. He gasped for a moment, snorting and taking his time to run a hand through his hair. “I… Yes, I think so…”, he mumbled. Nick laughed a little and said something, but Daryl did not hear it. The woman he loved? Did he really think of her in this regard? Damn, yes… He loved you. He just had to stop acting like an idiot. It had been easy to think about it. “Then see you tomorrow.”  
“What?” The boy played with a wry grin and walked down the corridor. He opened the door to a cabin that Daryl wanted to share with Carl. He waited at the door until Daryl passed him, walked in the direction of Y/N’s room, and called him when he was a little further away. “She likes massages, trust me, I know.”  
“Fuck you!” Nick went to the other room and grinned openly. When Daryl entered the room, he found you lying on the bed, the headphones in your ears, and your feet moving in the rhythm of the music. As soon as you saw him, you straightened up on your bed and looked at him. “Daryl!”, you called and a sincere smile was painted on your face. You put the CD player aside and dangled your legs out of bed. “I’ve taken the top bed because I can never sleep in the one below, I always think it’s going to fall on me, the rooms are all so… Well, the fishermen didn’t have much privacy.” Daryl looked around. Next to the bed was a tiny desk on one side and a metal cabinet attached to the floor with big screws. Life at sea was obviously sacrificed, at least according to the severity of this room. The man looked at you with a glance. “Sorry, I know it’s late.” You both knew he wasn’t referring to the time. Daryl had appreciated the fact that you had said nothing to hurry him. You hadn’t asked for anything. You had let him do that, as if you knew that he had yet to overcome a small obstacle. Or rather several small obstacles, and you were only the first. You shook your head, your Y/H/C hair moving with you. “It doesn’t matter, I’m happy you’re here.” Daryl approached and stroked gently over your legs. He reached out to grab you as you slid off the bed the next moment. He laid you down on the floor and took your face in his hands. You kissed each other for a long time, kisses with intention to taste each other’s lips. You ran your arms over the man’s hips, and as you pulled back and looked him in the eyes, you understood what he was feeling without having to say anything. Daryl was not a man of many words, but you could read the meaning behind his facial expressions. The man stood up and you stood on his tiptoes while you kissed him again, then on his cheek and between his jaw and neck. Daryl brushed your hair back and kissed you behind your ear, pulled off his vest, reaching your collarbone as his hands slowly moved to your chest and stomach. You put your hands under the fabric of his shirt to take it off, but Daryl suddenly held your wrists tighter than necessary and stopped them. The man swallowed and relaxed his grip, but he didn’t allow you to touch him. “I have scars on my back…” He was afraid of your reaction. Maybe you would feel disgust or worse, pain. “Do the scars still hurt?”  
“No. They are old.”  
“Does it bother you when I see or touch them?”,you spoke in a dry, almost professional tone like a nurse asking about a patient.  
Daryl swallowed hard. “No.”  
“Then I don’t have to know anything…”, you said and reached back to kiss him again. You felt the scars and the skin that felt so smooth next to them. You hesitated only a moment, then slid your nails over his back, leaving a slight scratch, a caress, and Daryl shuddered. He squeezed your butt and pulled you towards him to continue kissing you and then throwing you to the lower bed. Daryl reached out and took a breast with his hand, listening to the sweet sound of your breathing. Then he sank to your stomach, kissed it and held you by the butt with his other hand and then kissed you on your inner thigh. When he looked up, he saw that you put your hands over your breasts and squeezed them from time to time. If there was something that excited him, it was like seeing you, and that strengthened the erection he already had. You had tilted your head back, your veins slightly swollen at your throat and a hand over your mouth to keep from moaning too much. Daryl started to get up, but hit his head against the upper bed… You began to laugh under him. Despite himself, an amused smile was painted on his lips. “Let’s move on…”,he said rubbing his head kinda ashamed. When you were both naked, you took him back to the desk and shoved him into the chair. You sat down on him without meeting his eyes. Daryl gave in to the feeling that he was invading you and after a few minutes he grabbed you by the hips and began to strengthen the thrusts. Not that there was a real need, for the moment he knew that he and you knew enough about sex… You pressed against him with dry and abrupt movements. “Are you alright?”, you asked in a low but worried voice. “Yes, get up…”, he said bluntly. He grabbed you by the neck and almost forced you to kiss him. He let you kneeling on the floor and followed you. “Turn around.” For a second he hated himself saying that. A corner of his brain wondered if you were as comfortable as he was. Without much romance, without any special sentimental expectations in the Apocalypse. He loved to see you enjoying it, shuddering with the pleasure he gave you and allowing you to enjoy without inhibitions. However, Daryl wondered if he shouldn’t be too careful…  
He entered you gently, intending to be as gallant as possible. Soon his intentions were put to the test. Your back, the waist that widened on your hips, was enough to seduce him. Then you opened your legs and began to move against him as if inviting him. Daryl’s movements became fast and hard, and he almost lost his head when he realized you were still touching yourself. He put a hand on the neck of you and brought your face close to the ground and held you tight. You were soon shaken by orgasm. Daryl stayed in you, enjoying the situation and taking a deep breath, but he couldn’t stand it any longer than he thought possible, given his excitement. He fell next to you, while you slowly regained your breath. As soon as he sat again, your lips were back on his. For a while you both sat there until you looked up at him. “I’m feeling a bit cold…” You did not want to climb up on the bed, so you lay down on the lower bed and covered yourself. Daryl lay down with you a little later, and although you were not particularly cold, you let the sheet reach to your chest. He put one arm behind his head and put his other arm around your shoulders. You rested your head on his shoulder and pressed yourself against his hips. Daryl looked at you and noticed that you kept your eyes closed. But he knew you weren’t sleeping. He allowed himself to rethink of the sex you had together. He liked the way you had shown yourself in those moments. He liked the fact that he had always been reserved in public, serious, and instead had a sensual soul hidden in him. He liked that you liked that intimacy and didn’t make it a taboo or a kind of power play, but was easily led by his touch and that you longed for his body. The man let his hand slide lower and touched your butt again. He saw you smile and you mumbled something he did not understand. You suddenly fell asleep and he did not want to wake you up again. This was the first night you had been able to sleep well for a long time and didn’t wake up. And it was the first night that Daryl lay awake the whole time next to someone, deliberately not going to sleep, though there was no danger.

Glenn looked up and waved to Judith. The child followed his gaze. The girl came up to him and stretched her arms out and he looked down and smiled. “Do you see it too?”, he asked pointing to a distant spot. Judith approached the rail of the boat and hopped three times before giving up. She couldn’t see it. She thought she could see a mermaid, for Nick had told her about beautiful stories about the mermaids and how they sang along with the crabs and other fish at the bottom of the ocean. But she saw nothing. “Is it Arielle?” Glenn chuckled. “I see smoke in the distance, please get your father, I need to talk to him.” Judith ran between fishing rods, rifles and a box of dead cod - the dinner, to her father. Shortly after, she reappeared with Rick at her side. “What’s wrong?”  
“There’s smoke, do you see it or am I blind?” Rick did not need to sharpen his view. A thin but dark thread stood out in front of them. If you all had continued this way with the speed you had, you would have passed the little fire or whatever it was and soon left it behind. Rick bit his tongue and looked around indecisively. That smoke could be anything, or it could be nothing… Leaving the boat was always a risk, and he knew he would have to put his companions to death every time they stepped off. They’d been traveling south for a few months, and according to Travis’ estimate, they must have been at the east-south end. It was certainly hard to understand where they were, but the climate was enough to remove any doubt. “Do we increase the speed?” Glenn’s question distracted him from his thoughts.  
“No.” Glenn seemed surprised at his answer. He looked at him with wide eyes. “Shouldn’t we try to leave it behind as soon as possible?…”  
“No, let’s go down with speed, tell Travis to approach the shore.” Glenn took a few steps to follow the former sheriff, who moved quickly below deck. “Rick, why?” The man did not answer him, instead he reached the cabin, which he shared with Michonne and saw that she was honing and cleaning her katana. “Get ready, tell the others, we’ll get off the boat.” The woman raised her head in alarm. “What’s wrong?”  
“Glenn has seen smoke.”  
“So…?” Rick looked into the deserted corridor and then slowly closed the door. “Let’s go down, let’s see what happens, and if it’s nothing, let’s go ahead as we have.”  
He approached Michonne and sat beside her. “We could find something out there.”  
“We don’t need anything, we have at least a month left over!” She looked at him with frowning eyebrows and for the first time in a long time she couldn’t see what his purpose was. “We had planned not to stop. We still got enough, Rick.”  
“I know, I…”, Rick sighed, looked away and ran a hand over his face. Michonne said nothing and waited for him to start talking again. “…Carl is a young man now, Judith is growing more every day, and we… That’s the world we live in, what we’ll leave for them and every other kid out there, I know, it’ll make you all foolish but I think I have found a solution… ”  
“A solution for what?”  
“We have to take the risk Michonne, we have to do what’s right for our children’s future, let’s get off the boat, let’s search for other people, people you can trust in. The world has gone into chaos years ago. All that happened… The people we became were just out of fear, we didn’t know what to do and the first thing we did was forcibly to react to this new world that we didn’t know. Now we know it, or rather, we’ll fix it, we know this reality well, it’s our life.” The woman’s eyes softened as if she were about to smile. “It is, so what do you suggest?”  
“To be successful, I need your support and the help of everyone here from our group - if someone disagrees, we’ll decide together what we should do - we should-…” ,Rick paused for the right words, “…-create a kind of network of alliances, talk to people, convince them that this world isn’t the best place to fight them with hatred and violence, it will take a long time like in Alexandria and the other places and we probably will never bring an end to the apocalypse but Walkers are no longer a problem, we have all learned to deal with them, people are the problem and they need to be convinced, we have to go back to civilization and that’s what I’m going to do.” The smile finally spread to Michonne’s face. She’d never seen Rick like that, excited by an ideal he thought was right. The fact that he first shared it with her made her proud and happy. “Okay… Let’s tell the others.”  
They quickly realized that it was difficult to get all the people on the boat together at once. Madison thought Rick’s idea was a useless risk, as did you and Maggie. Nick was thrilled and Travis had agreed, albeit with some reservations. After a few hours you anchored. Judith would stay on the boat with Carl and Alicia, while the rest of the group would explore the area and develop a plan. Travis was optimistic, he was a scholar and he knew that such situations didn’t last forever. It was human nature to forcibly respond to a deadly situation and then find a solution with the brain as that deadly situation became routine. Carol and Glenn thought so too… The guys, especially Nick and Carl, were more enthusiastic and more of an idealist than an argument like Travis, while Alicia accepted the situation and thought that it was not a bad idea, even if it was very risky. Madison was strongly against it, and though part of her understood the logic of what Rick said, she was not ready to risk her children’s lives again. Maggie and you considered it too risky, as the other survivors were probably not ready to embrace this path with open arms and Rick would soon have noticed. Daryl hadn’t expressed an opinion, but in his heart he agreed. He was the one who did things instead of discussing it. He swung his crossbow over his shoulder, gave you a long kiss and stepped out of the ship with the rest of the group as you all entered the mainland shortly thereafter. You were one of the first groups looking for contacts with other survivors again, but after a while you realized that you were not the only ones. Despite the discussions that took place on the first day, you realized that you had a life ahead of them and that you were cultivated like a rare flower. That’s what the world offered you and you could decide if you should leave your lives like that or react differently. You realized you were wrong whenever you thought you had nothing left. You had your lives. Together as a big family. And it was more valuable than what any Walker in the world could ever claim.


End file.
